ABSTRACT
The United States and the international human rights regime
Supporting the creation of an international criminal court, but one with limited powers
Refusal to join the ICC
Recent evidence of cooperation, but no treaty ratification
The United States and the ICC: assessing the explanatory power of the credible threat theory
Conclusion
There are limits to what one can learn from large statistical analyses about why states commit to the International Criminal Court (ICC). Those analyses provide information about trends, but they cannot fully explain why any state or type of state joins the court or precisely how the ICC’s stronger enforcement mechanism influences commitment decisions. This chapter, exploring in detail the United States’ refusal to ratify the Rome Statute, is the first of several case study chapters tracing the ICC ratification behavior of particular states.