Lately, I have been conversing with AI about various subjects which I believe to be too serious to ignore. When I was in college, early on I was accused of plagiarizing ideas from the likes of Kant, Heidegger, Nietzsche and other philosophers. Of course, at 18 years old, I had never even heard of them let alone stolen their ideas. What I eventually discovered, as did my professors, is that I had a bunch of "original ideas" that someone else had already thought of. Trying to study the erudite authors, I did find out a few things about them as well as about myself. First, the three of them and many, many other great philosophers could not explain to someone how to tie a shoelace. Most of them were terrible communicators, which meant that (1) hardly anyone really understood what they were trying to say and (2) they may have actually seemed even more intelligent than they were because they were so hard to follow. As for myself, I realized (1) that if I had a good idea, there was a really excellent chance that someone else had already thought of it and (2) that if I had a lousy idea, there was certainly a chance that no one else had ever thought of it! So, from then on I would almost always write my papers and articles off the top of my head, then search for anyone who had already written about the things that I had addressed, trying to give them due credit. With AI, I can usually ask questions, present my ideas and be rewarded with the identity of someone who may have actually said the same thing or even the opposite in a manner that I can understand. If I disagree and cannot get the information I sought, I have learned how to simply rephrase my question in a more acceptable form.
For example, with regard to the recent shenanigans by the Supreme Court, I asked if the president were not only guilty of international war crimes by ordering the destruction of boats with accused drug smugglers without either due process or even hard evidence and especially of the murder of the survivors of the initial attacks. I then suggested that the majority of the court were guilty of being accessories. Obviously the justices were even warned of the likelihood that their decision would result in murder and of course it did! Unlike the president, they did not actively confer any immunity on themselves for the commission of murder, suggesting that they too would be guilty of war crimes under international law. AI's reply involved some "hemming and hawing," but basically quoted members of the international court who agreed that both the president's orders and the involvement of the Supreme Court constituted international war crimes and my reply was that I considered AI's answer to be a guarded "yes."
My next question, naturally, was: "Can anyone with so-called 'immunity' from the law claim 'protection' by the law?" I pompously added that my 8-year-old niece could convince at least one honest juror that if either the president or the guilty justices were harmed by an injured party or by the family of a murdered victim that the perpetrators of the injury too would be immune from punishment. To my temporary surprise, I was reminded of the "Social Contract Theory, a "cornerstone of legal philosophy" since the enlightenment. That is, if the law does not apply to the powerful, then why should it protect them? According to John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, two philosophers, by the way, who did know how to communicate, there exists something called the "Logic of Reciprocity." In other words, the law is a two-way street. According to AI, citizens give up the right to "frontier justice" in exchange for the state's promise to provide objective justice. So, by the state declaring itself "immune" from the rules, it is effectively opting out of its "social contract." Thus both the president and the SCOTUS majority are literally "outlaws," outside the protection of the law- as such there would be no legal consequences if harm were done to them, especially in retaliation for their crimes, as they had already rejected the law's authority. As my 8-year-old niece would tell you, this leads to "Jury Nullification," the idea that a jury decides that if the law does not apply to someone, that person cannot ask for the law's protection. The jury can ignore it.
And then there is the elephant in the room, "The Nuremberg Principles!" Shooting survivors in the water is considered a clearly illegal order that a soldier has a duty to refuse. According to AI, in the Peleus trial, the U-boat commander, von Eck, was executed for ordering his crew to kill survivors of the Greek steamer, Peleus. The executions of survivors ordered by Trump clearly qualify as similar "crimes against humanity" according to international law. "But what about the SCOTUS justices, are they not also implicated in the murders?" I asked. Can they be held responsible according to international law? Again, the precedent is already set by the "Nuremberg Judges Trial" in 1947. Judges were found guilty of providing the legal veneer of legitimacy that allowed crimes against humanity to occur. The verdict: the tribunal found that by twisting the law to give a regime "legal" cover for atrocities, judges were considered integral participants in the crimes. To quote AI: " the dagger of the assassin was concealed beneath the robe of the jurist."
Now, for members of the Supreme Court to be "accessories," or "co-conspirators," it needs to be proven that they realize that their ruling would be used for the commission of war crimes vs. humanity, something of which Justice Sotomayor and scores of authorities certainly warned them. Their ruling had to also embolden the administration to carry out the war crimes, which the Court majority did, not only by their ruling, but by purposely delaying a number of appeals and other decisions, especially as to bogus emergency war powers. International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo agreed that the boat strikes themselves constituted crimes against humanity, so the added killing of survivors is what my grandchildren would call a "no brainer!" Meanwhile, to really prove that he agreed that heads of state do not actually enjoy criminal immunity for corrupt official acts, Trump actually used the principle to justify his kidnapping of Venezuela's Maduro! In fact, it is something I am sure Maduro's lawyer will point out if there is ever a trial.
So, if the U.S. is unwilling or unable to prosecute its own leader(s) by manufacturing what AI calls a "domestic shield," it could well be a "primary trigger" for ICC intervention. If I were Mr. Trump, in the future, I might be very careful about stepping out of the country.....
Allen Finkelstein, 2/04/2026
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