Three judges at the International Criminal Court on Thursday sued the Trump administration over sanctions placed on them by a 2025 executive order.
The three plaintiffs—Judges Kimberly Prost of Canada, Solomy Bossa of Uganda, and Reine Alapini-Gansou of Benin—have served on ICC panels related to alleged crimes committed by either the American or Israeli militaries, and are among the eight ICC judges who have so far been hit with sanctions by the US State Department.
The ICC drew ire of US President Donald Trump for issuing an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opening a case into alleged war crimes by US troops in Afghanistan.
The judges’ lawsuit contends that Trump’s executive order establishing the sanctions was manifestly unlawful and in direct violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, which prohibits the government from making arbitrary and capricious policy changes.
The suit also claims that the US sanctions, which were invoked under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, are illegal because their work at the ICC does not pose an “emergency” to the country’s national security.
Andrew Loewenstein, attorney at Foley Hoag and lead counsel in the lawsuit, said the sanctions were designed to intimidate the ICC into dropping investigations related to the US and Israel.
"This sanctions regime is the antithesis of the rule of law,” Loewenstein said. “By targeting their financial and other personal interests, the sanctions are designed to exert extra-judicial pressure on Judges Prost, Bossa, and Alapini-Gansou and their colleagues on the ICC bench, with the objective of punishing them for past judicial decisions and coercing them into prioritizing their private interests over deciding cases on the basis of the law and facts.”
Loewenstein also noted that “the sanctions obstruct the ability of victims and witnesses of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, as well as their lawyers, from being able to present evidence or argument in the judges’ courtrooms or otherwise participate in proceedings before them.”
James Goldston, executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative and a co-counsel representing Judge Prost in the complaint, described the Trump administration’s sanctions as “an unprecedented attack on judicial independence and the rule of law.”
“These judges are being punished for discharging their judicial duties independently by rendering decisions with which the Trump administration disagrees,” Goldston added. “This is an effort to pressure them to render future decisions more to the administration’s liking.”
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