The International Criminal Court

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It's extremely difficult to bring people like that to trial aso ultimately, it can't be much more than symbolic. But it's a way of sort of symbolizing to the world that, you know, these are the ultimate crimes geneside. You now must be called out. People must be held to account. It sort of symbolizes, in a word, in a way that as sort of the wider moral world that we want to live in and the standards that our nations ought to maintain.

Rulers throughout history have used laws to impose order. But laws were not simply instruments of power and social control. They also offered ordinary people a way to express their diverse visions for a better world. The variety of the world’s laws has long been almost as great as the variety of its societies.

In this conversation, Shermer speaks with Oxford professor of the anthropology of law, Fernanda Pirie, who traces the rise and fall of the sophisticated legal systems underpinning ancient empires and religious traditions, showing how common people — tribal assemblies, merchants, farmers — called on laws to define their communities, regulate trade, and build civilizations. What truly unites human beings, Pirie argues, is our very faith that laws can produce justice, combat oppression, and create order from chaos.