Rubio blasts ‘global elite,’ self-appointed international judges in speech on vision for America at Federalist Society

“Over the past decade, we’ve received an endless barrage of claims about America’s alleged violations of international rules and norms, ranging from our foreign policy to our border enforcement to even what they call – what they call – our systemic racism,” Rubio said.

“None of this has anything to do with any real higher standard of justice,” he continued. “It is a function of the people who control the official organs of global governance. It is the function of the sprawling network of NGOs and agencies staffed by international activists and bureaucrats, along with their patrons here in the United States and around the world.”

Rubio argued that international law has become a political instrument used by unelected officials seeking to influence policies around the world.

“For this global elite, international law is not a neutral body of rules; international law is an instrument, an instrument to advance their interests under the pretense of universal principles,” he said. “For example, they’re staunch defenders of democracy – until particular elections challenge their interests. They lecture us on the importance of sovereignty even as they demand that nations surrender control of their borders and outsource their immigration laws to unelected international courts. They oppose, they say, all forms of imperialism, of conquest, of domination, but they seek to exercise authority over every country and every government on Earth.”

The Secretary of State noted how President Donald Trump made the decision earlier this year to sanction the International Criminal Court (ICC). Rubio called the ICC a “fake court” that claims to “supersede the laws and constitutions of sovereign states, even those who never signed up for it.”

“Americans have never agreed to submit to the ICC’s authority, but that court and its allies in the global bureaucracy have appointed themselves judge and jury and executioner of the international order, ruling over all but account – ruling over all,” Rubio said. “They think they have the right to rule over everyone, but they are accountable to no one, armed with the power to investigate, to prosecute, to persecute, and to jail our citizens according to laws we neither consent nor control.”

“Anyway, look, the weaponization of international law is not altogether different from what we’ve seen here at home,” he explained. “The activist courts who seek to govern by injunction, twisting the law to fit whatever their preferences happen to be at any given place or time; their allies in the academy, in the press, the professional activist class – the same people who just a few years earlier were denouncing the Constitution, okay? These are the same people who just a few years ago were saying and denouncing the Constitution as a racist and backwards document that was written by slaveowners designed only to protect the interest of wealthy white men.”

Rubio went on to argue that Americans should resist attempts by international bureaucrats and activist judges to limit the country’s independence. He said Americans are “not passive” and should not submit to radical judges or “soulless global bureaucrats.”

“The real America, the nation that actually exists in the text of our founding documents, that actually exists in the history of our people, in the conduct of the men who built backwater colonies into the greatest superpower on Earth, was always destined to go beyond, to be greater and stronger, more than which had come before,” Rubio said. “Our laws, our Constitution, our legal norms, and our political traditions developed because – not in spite – of that fact.”