Rubio Warns ICC Not to Enforce Its ‘Paper Decrees’ on Americans

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Friday that if the International Criminal Court tries to enforce its “paper decrees” on Americans, Washington’s answer will be a line he attributed to the Roman general Pompey.

“If they’re foolish enough to try to enforce their paper decrees on Americans, our answer will probably be the same as the Roman general, Pompey, when he said to those who were trying to invoke their cities’ charters against his legions. He said, ‘Stop quoting laws to men with swords,’” Rubio told the Federalist Society, according to the official State Department transcript.

Pompey’s Line Draws Applause

He was delivering the 25th Annual Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture at the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention, at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington on Nov. 13.

The line drew laughter and applause. Rubio then ad-libbed that it was “not politically correct to say that, but that’s what he said.”

The anecdote is a modern English rendering of a passage in Plutarch’s Life of Pompey, in which Pompey, around 82 BC, reportedly told the Mamertines of Messana to stop quoting laws to men girded with swords.

Washington Rejects the Court’s Reach

Rubio used the moment to defend sanctions that President Donald Trump’s administration imposed on the ICC earlier this year.

He called the court “a fake court which is an unelected world tribunal, which claims to supersede the laws and constitutions of sovereign states, even those who never signed up for it.”

“Americans have never agreed to submit to the ICC’s authority,” he said.

The United States signed the Rome Statute that established the court but never ratified the treaty. Rubio previously warned that Washington would dismantle the ICC if it did not end its threats.

He said the court and its allies had “appointed themselves judge and jury and executioner of the international order,” armed with the power “to jail our citizens according to laws we neither consent nor control.”

Law as a Political Instrument

“For this global elite, international law is not a neutral body of rules; international law is an instrument, an instrument to advance their interests under the pretense of universal principles,” Rubio said.

He said “international law” had been invoked against nearly every major foreign policy decision of the Trump administration, citing Caribbean cartel-boat strikes, the capture of Nicolás Maduro, immigration enforcement, and the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

The Mayflower speech was Rubio’s first major domestic address after the midterm elections. The same keynote also included a contrast between North Korea and Iran, which is covered separately.

He then tied the ICC passage to what he called domestic “activist courts.”