The International Criminal Court exists to implement a treaty, the Rome Statute of 1998, which contains objectives, principles, and mechanisms over which there was long debate, dispute, compromise, and finally both elation and disappointment. The Statute should be thought of more as a negotiated cognitive and political map than an architectural plan because even though it charts the territory and encompasses crucial compromises, there is no guarantee that it is a coherent design for an organization. The Statute's negotiators – diplomats, nongovernmental organization activists, lawyers, and scholars from diverse countries – shared many of the same ideas coming into the negotiation. They came to agree on the general legal territory upon which the Court would operate and on many of its features; however, details of the organization's structure and its overall trajectory remained to be charted in further negotiation and in practice.

Like maps drawn through the ages on the basis of explorers' reports, rumors, imagination, and creative draftsmanship, the Statute is a snapshot of perceptions and compromises at a particular historical moment. A long history precedes it, and developments in which it is a milestone continue. To better understand the Statute and Court, metaphors even more dynamic than “map” might serve. The map reflects a moment, but the moment is only a slice from a stream of events.