Many applauded when Navi Pillay was awarded the Nobel peace prize. The South African human rights lawyer had chaired the UN commission of inquiry that found Israel to have committed genocide in Gaza and served for five years as a judge on the international criminal court (ICC).

Donald Trump responded a few hours later by imposing sanctions on the ICC. He chose a moment for celebrating the rule of law to try to undermine it.

Trump had already sanctioned 13 ICC judges and prosecutors, obstructing their access to credit cards, bank accounts and the modern economy. The new sanctions target the entire institution. If they take effect in six months as threatened, they would effectively bar all financial transactions with the court – and more.

They would starve it of cash; no banks would be able to do business with it. They could force internet companies to halt the court’s email and computer systems and telecom companies to cut its phones. And they would preclude human rights groups and victims from working with the court. Violators would risk penalties themselves.

The sanctions are the latest step in Trump’s effort to make the world safe for American and Israeli war criminals. He wants the ICC to agree, presumably during the six-month hiatus, never to prosecute the national of a country that has not joined the court, even when the individual commits a crime on the territory of a member state.

This is a battle that the US government fought and lost when the court’s founding treaty was adopted in Rome in 1998. The US position was repudiated overwhelmingly, with the treaty approved by a vote of 120 to 7.

In justifying the latest sanctions in the name of American sovereignty, Marco Rubio, the US secretary........

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