Pierre Prosper
He's US Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, and was formerly special counsel and policy advisor in the Office of War Crimes Issues, a special assistant to the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, an Assistant US Attorney for the Central District of California, and Deputy District Attorney for Los Angeles County.
Jeremy Rabkin
He's a George Mason University School of Law Professor of Law and member of the US Institute of Peace, congressionally funded to promote US interests in "resolving" international conflicts. He also has a particular interest in matters of national security law and early constitutional history.
Joshua Rozenberg
His bio calls him "Britain's best-known commentator on the law," having been BBC's legal correspondent for 15 years, and since 2000 in the same capacity for The Daily Telegraph. He also writes for the London Evening Standard and the Law Society's Gazette.
Mark Shurtleff
He's Utah Attorney General, former Assistant Attorney General, and once served as Deputy County Attorney and Commissioner of Salt Lake County.
Notable by Their Exclusion
Notably absent were academics, scholars, human rights activists, and other critics of US and Israeli policies, the rule of law, and accountability for states that break it. In framing issues, Conference participants told attendees that international law doesn't apply when it conflicts with powerful state interests, the rights of their victims thereby unaddressed, silenced, and of no interest.
George Mason University's Jeremy Rabkin called "taking international law too seriously" dangerous, saying "It's not like the tax code." Audaciously, he claimed its principles are unclear with no court to enforce them, when he knows laws are clear and unequivocal and the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague is a permanent tribunal established to prosecute individuals for crimes of war, against humanity, and genocide.
John Bolton told attendees:
"It is a big mistake for us to grant any validity to international law even when it may seem in our short-term interest to do so - because over the long-term, those who think that international law really means anything are those who want to constrict the United States."
In other words, we're boss. What we say goes, and dissidents are legitimate enemies, an idea dominant in Nazi Germany and other past and current despotic states.
Hitler justified exterminating Jews for destroying the German nation through culture and democracy. He started WW II blaming Poland for a Nazi-staged incident. He declared war on Britain claiming its prime minister spurned his 1940 peace offer saying:
"If the Providence has so willed that the German people cannot be spared this fight, then I can only be grateful that it entrusted me with the leadership in this historic struggle which, for the next 500 or 1,000 years, will be described as decisive, not only for....Germany, but for the whole of Europe and indeed the whole world."
