Abstract
I. Introduction The dust has begun to settle on last summer's controversial rulings on Israel's security wall by, respectively the International Court of Justice "ICJ" and Israel's own High Court of Justice "HCJ", even as Israel's bulldozers continue to kick up much dust of their own, albeit along the new lines mandated by the latter legal ruling. 1 Both of these opinions ruled against the Israeli government; yet while the High Court of Justice's ruling did so in a way that buttresses the foundations of democracy and the rule of law, the ICJ undermined both. That the ICJ advisory opinion was a setback for current Israeli government policy is obvious. My purpose in these pages is to sketch several ways, beyond the confines of Israel's current predicaments as such, in which the ICJ's decision highlights the problems and pitfalls of judicialized human rights promotion in this historical moment, and beyond. Specifically I will argue that the ostensible application of neutral principles in international fora, and the picture thereby conjured up by the ICJ of an international legal regime ordered by stately principles of human rights with the politics left out -- and with it any need to distinguish between democratic and non-democratic regimes, or deal with the thick, bedeviling contexts within which human rights issues arise in the post-Cold War world -- though tempting, is a deeply dangerous delusion, one with potentially ruinous consequences for the enterprise of human rights itself. I will first sketch the judicialization of ...