Tony Stephen

The Law That Only Looks Down More and more, democratic institutions themselves, courts, parliaments, international bodies, are treated as instruments of power rather than constraints upon it, as the multilateral system is dismantled. The clearest recent admission came from Canada’s Prime Minister, Mark Carney, whose comments are worth reproducing. At Davos this year he conceded that international law is“applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused”, and that the rules-based order had always been a useful fiction the powerful set aside whenever it suited them. And yet even as the tectonic plates of global alliances shift, as American hegemony wanes and the Global South finds its voice, Australia still clings publicly to the pretence. There is a structural reason the law bends toward power. The one body able to adjudicate peace, the UN Security Council, was built with a lock. Five nations, the victors of a war that ended eighty years ago, hold a permanent seat and a veto. And these five are most often among those accused of the gravest crimes. We built a court over the powerful, then handed them the only key. But we do know the law can reach the powerful. An International Criminal Court warrant is outstanding for Vladimir Putin, for the abduction and genocide of Ukrainian children, and for Benjamin Netanyahu, for crimes against humanity and the war crime of starvation in Gaza. But a warrant is not justice, and the most powerful perpetrators still run free. In contrast, Rodrigo Duterte stands trial for the killings of his so-called “war on drugs,” a crime identical to what the Trump administration is now doing to Venezuelans, extrajudicial military killings without due process, evidence or rights. When other major powers see a disintegrating system of prohibitions and rules, and that aggression can be launched with impunity at any moment, the world can only become far less safe. The United States, which drove the tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia and called the warrant for Putin justified, refuses to accept the same standards for itself, or its closest allies. Nearly every person the ICC has tried has come from the Global South, not because atrocity lives only there, but because that is usually the only place the law is allowed to reach. Some escape through the veto, like China for its persecution of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Others are charged but never surrendered, like Netanyahu. But one is never even named. Article 7 promised that all are equal before the law. But the law cannot mean one thing in Moscow and another in Washington, and still preach equality. As Carney so eloquently laid bare. Curtin University Centre for Human Rights Education Oration, 2026