There is an ironic background to this essay on the future of international criminal jurisdiction.

It was to have been delivered as the Lionel Cohen lecture at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in June 2002. At the end of March that year, as I was preparing it, the Israeli attack on Jenin occurred. Friends (Jewish friends as it happened) forwarded to me an eyewitness account of appalling events which Israel then and since has refused to allow to be independently investigated. I am among the many Jews worldwide who feel shame at Israel's repeated violations of international law, and I withdrew from the lecture.

Among the messages which reached me from Israel were some from scholars who felt as I did and had hoped for support. To them I apologise: perhaps I should have gone and spoken my mind. Others pointed out to me that, whatever its faults, Israel is a democracy. To them I replied that in a democracy protests count, and this was my protest.

A few days later the Plymouth Law Society invited me to give that year's Pilgrim Fathers lecture, and I delivered in Devon the paper I had intended to give in Jersualem. It was published subsequently in the London Review of Books.