In a world where states are sovereign and supreme, international relations are anarchic. Who can call leaders to account apart from their own citizens? The inability to answer that question makes a mockery of the idea of "justice," subordinating the idea to domestic political concerns. The International Criminal Court (ICC) was established five years ago to render "justice" less abstract and eliminate the impunity that political leaders have long enjoyed.

The war crimes trials that followed World War II first focused international attention on the need for a tribunal to deal with war crimes and crimes against humanity. Yet the ICC's birth was possible only after the end of the Cold War. Atrocities that accompanied the chaos in countries such as Cambodia, Yugoslavia and Congo helped make the case for such a court. International negotiations culminated in the Rome Statute of 1998, which established the ICC. The statute became a binding treaty -- and the ICC came into existence -- in 2002 after it was ratified by 60 countries. Today, 104 countries have ratified the treaty, and another 41 have signed without ratifying it.

Last month the court agreed to hold its first trial. Mr. Thomas Lubanga has the dubious honor of being first in the dock. He is charged with recruiting child soldiers during the civil war that raged in the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1998-2003, during which some 4 million people are thought to have died. Mr. Lubanga is alleged to have "recruited" -- kidnapped -- children as young as 10 and forced them to fight. As the prosecutor explained in a pretrial hearing last year, "Lubanga made children train to kill, Lubanga made them kill and Lubanga let the children die . . . in hostilities."