The United States and Human Rights Marginalization at the International Court of Justice, 1945–1950

Abstract

Using the 1950 International Court of Justice (ICJ) Paris Peace Treaties advisory opinions as a vantage point, this articles explores the changing attitude of the American government towards the emerging United Nations human rights regime and the latter became entangled in Cold War politics. The first part situates the contribution of this article within the postwar human rights historiography. The second part explores how US legal advisors constructed arguments destined to insulate the American domestic legal system from the alleged domestic disruptive effects of the new human rights. The final section delves into the cases of Cardinal Mindszenty of Budapest and Archbishop Stepinac of Zagreb, and how they reverberated at the ICJ. It argues that US legal advisors sought to turn the human rights violations that triggered the judicial proceedings into violations of treaty provisions. In the process, the ICJ validated this transformation and, thus contributed, to marginalizing the emerging United Nations human rights regime.