The judges point to treaty Article 12, which states “the Court may exercise its jurisdiction if one or more… States are Parties to this Statute…” They argue that this refers to the day the Pre-trial Chamber rules to authorize the investigation. The judges acknowledge an oft-cited portion of Article 127 specifying a state’s withdrawal “shall not prejudice in any way the continued consideration of any matter which was already under consideration by the Court prior to the date on which the withdrawal became effective.” But they don’t agree that a preliminary examination is considered the “matter before the court” that the article refers to, arguing that examinations have an “informal nature… [and] do not carry sufficient weight for engaging the Court’s jurisdiction…” They further assert that to interpret Article 127 as referring to a preliminary examination would “render [it] meaningless by allowing to trigger the Court’s jurisdiction indefinitely.” They note the article appears in the “Final Clauses” section of the statute, asserting “provisions contained in that part cannot alter the carefully crafted jurisdictional regime contained in Part 2…” The judges’ take on Article 12 represents an inaccurate analysis of the impact of “are” on the article’s meaning. A historian writing a book about what happened might title a table, “State Parties to the Rome Treaty.” Readers could not rely solely on that to know whether it includes all states known to ever have been parties, states that were parties for the treaty’s entire lifetime, states that were parties at the time of the apocalypse, states that were parties for more than some minimum duration, or something else. Iran went to the International Court of Justice in 2016, arguing the freeze violated the 1955 “Treaty of Amity, Economic Relations, and Consular Rights between the United States and Iran.” Article 21 reads: “Any dispute between the High Contracting Parties as to the interpretation or application of the present Treaty… shall be submitted to the International Court of Justice…” The US, after withdrawing in 2018, argued ICJ lacked jurisdiction. The function of a preliminary examination, furthermore, is for the prosecutor to consider whether to request authorization for an investigation — a matter under consideration by the Office of the Prosecutor, by definition. Read Full Story