Unjust Justice: Against the Tyranny of International Law [Hardcover]

Chantal Delsol (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 151 pages
• Publisher: Intercollegiate Studies Institute; 2nd Revised edition edition (July 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933859075
• ISBN-13: 978-1933859071
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #680,319 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Globalization? whose globalization, the left's or the market's?, September 17, 2008

By 

Quilmiense (USA/Spain) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Unjust Justice: Against the Tyranny of International Law (Hardcover)

A book to be read along with N. Sharansky's "Defending Identity". Delsol warns about the recklessness of trying to impose a positive law, a supranational law over the sovereignity of the world nations.

When the Enlightenment finished off Catholic morals in the West it left a moral wasteland that was filled by the nationalist or socialist creeds of totalitarianism. In the next wave of social engineering that our current anti-Christian left has concocted, legal moralism is now in vogue. It is the new Inquisition.

Delsol very intelligently unmasks the demagoguery of this new ideology. But is the International Court able to judge Chinese authorities for what they have done in Tibet? or put Putin in the dock for crimes committed in Chechnya? Of course not. So for the time being "international criminal justice is ... a sort of private vengeance ... I punish my neighbor ... because I can." But justice should be applicable to all or to none, and should be applicable in a well-defined territory without any exceptions." Or else it ain't justice.

"The Western groups that rebel and rail against globalization do not oppose globalization as such, but liberal (conservative) globalization ... rather they want to direct themselves the process of homogenization, they want it to occur under their banner." They are really "alternative globalists".

"A few decades ago it was the Marxists who were considered the paragons of generosity and humanity. Today ... the camp of the good is represented by the democratic defenders of human rights." Today's commisar dresses as a judge.

America beware: don't get sucked by this wave of European self-righteousness and phony goodness. They claim to seek international justice so they can judge Israel, America (and every ideal that makes America great and free, different from the rest of the envious world -my words).

Delsol sees it as a modern Manicheanism: the virtuous states dominated by the liberal media, always pandering to the basic instincts of their masses, and to rogue states, against evil West. The Inquisition comes back. Don't be fooled again. Same devil, new suit.

A great book. No excuse not to be warned. I believe when the US saved Europe from collaps after wwii it just made a kind of pact with the devil, for the sake of keeping to do business as usual. The best diagnosis I found is the following: "In other periods of history, Europeans have decreed that power alone counts, but today it is morality. In other periods they wanted industrialization, today they want to protect the environment. In every case, the world has to follow suit, no matter the circumstances in which others find themselves." Yeah, they want to be the deceased in the funeral, the bride in the wedding, and the victim of this self-inflicted human sacrifice.

A great woman, never mind she's French (just kidding). It gives hope to the human spirit.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Should be required reading for anyone studying international law, December 7, 2008

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Unjust Justice: Against the Tyranny of International Law (Hardcover)

Knowledge is power, and power can be used for tyranny. "Unjust Justice: Against the Tyranny of International Law" looks at the growing flaws in international law. Aiming at pretension, hypocrisy, and other notorious things so-called progressive minds have manipulated international law for in the name of peace, Delsol pulls no punches in being honest and frank about the misdeeds of those in charge. "Unjust Justice" should be required reading for anyone studying international law.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dictatorship of the Transnational Progressives, September 29, 2010

By 

Pieter "Toypom" (Johannesburg) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Unjust Justice: Against the Tyranny of International Law (Hardcover)

This is the concluding essay in a trilogy which encompasses Icarus Fallen and the Unlearned Lessons of the 20th Century. Here, the author dissects the fallacy of the concept of international justice, identifying its origin, demonstrating its real nature and warning what the world would become should it ever be implemented under a global government. Delsol defends cultural diversity but not the perversion which is called multiculturalism.

She shows that this demand for international justice and for the international institutions designed to serve it expresses a religious impulse inflamed by missionary zeal. Despite their rejection of religious certainty and its resulting intolerance, its advocates purvey their own false certitudes. The ideal is nothing but a secular essentialism which derives from the very Christian universalism which they despise.

This universalism of late modernity wishes to depolitize the individual in order to replace politics with a specific morality. She argues that such an imposition would lead to a semi-pantheistic cosmopolitanism that ultimately deprives the individual of humanity. No such thing as a uniform, transnational citizen exists. The rejection of particularity disincarnates mankind into abstraction.

By undermining the freedom of individual conscience this new legal moralism renders moral choice impossible. Blind to its own lack of objectivity, it denies the uniqueness of the individual and by implication, the sanctity of life. In effect, it elevates a particular system of preferences or set of attachments above reason and debate.

Besides, not all transgressors of such 'international law' are subject to its enforcement now nor will be in the foreseeable future. Justice should be applicable to all without exception. It cannot be selectively applied to liberal democracies whilst ignoring the perpetrators of atrocities against the people of for example Chechnya or Tibet.

Driven by the compulsion for certitude, this secular universality is fueled by expectation which inevitably leads to impatience. Robert Conquest explains the pitfalls of the utopian impulse in his brilliant work The Dragons of Expectation. A vision of formless universality separates the individual from her/his cultural context. The notion of the global village is mere metaphor, she reminds us, as there is no universal culture. Furthermore, the neutrality claimed by the promoters of international justice is impossible.

Truth is, we cannot grasp the Good in its fullness, only partial impressions and remnants of it. That is where tradition, hope and faith in eternal referents come in. The 20th century proved that when spiritual referents are abandoned, the secular referents that displace them become abusive absolutes. This is idolatry - the confusion of categories, the failure to distinguish between the image of God and idealism or ideology.

International Justice does not recognize shades of grey or the fact that good & evil are present in every human being; it would enforce a rigid distinction between perpetrators and sufferers. In brief, it lacks understanding of the human condition. To put it bluntly, the transnational progressives that advocate it imagine themselves to be flawless champions of the ultimate good. That is exactly what the true believers of the previous century's secular salvationist ideologies believed.

The true Enlightenment of early modernity was betrayed by the abusive ideologies of later modernity as so eloquently explained by Gertrude Himmelfarb in The Roads to Modernity. Delsol argues that we need to acknowledge the debt that modernity owes to Judeo-Christian values and ethics. The nature and significance of that debt are brilliantly illuminated by David Brog in his book defending the legacy of faith in the West.