“Stop quoting laws to men with swords.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio, delivering the Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture in Washington, warns the International Criminal Court not to try enforcing its “paper decrees” on Americans, and quotes the Roman general Pompey to make the point.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered the 25th Annual Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture at the Federalist Society’s 2026 National Lawyers Convention in Washington, D.C., on Friday, November 13, 2026. In the passage shown here, Rubio attacks the International Criminal Court as an unelected world tribunal that Americans never agreed to submit to. He notes that President Donald Trump sanctioned the court earlier this year, and warns that if its judges try to enforce what he calls their paper decrees on Americans, the answer will be the one he attributes to Pompey, the Roman general who brushed aside a city’s charters when his legions arrived.
Reuters reported that the address, Rubio’s first major speech outside his diplomatic duties since the November 3 midterm elections, drew a standing ovation from the conservative legal audience. The lecture ranged wider. Rubio argued that the “spirit of Marx” lives on in the international order, and that submitting to what he called soulless global bureaucrats would betray who Americans are. But the ICC passage was its sharpest moment, and it is presented here in one continuous cut, exactly as delivered, from the State Department’s own recording of the lecture.
Sources: U.S. Department of State (official video) – Reuters, Nov. 13, 2026
Video: U.S. Department of State
