The Pour Over Today - TPO Explains: What in the World is International Law?

Episode Date: January 10, 2026

Readers of The Pour Over pick a topic to have explained, and Jason and Kathleen have to get Joe to understand it in less than 30 minutes… This week, they’re explaining international law. Looking to support us? You can choose to pay ⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠ Check out our sponsors! We actually use and enjoy every single one. Cru Wild Alaskan Safe House Project Gloo QAVA CCCU Filament Bible Upside Mosh LMNT Theology in the Raw Not Just Sunday Podcast Bible Gateway Plus

Today's episode is brought to you by our lead sponsor, Safe House Project. Okay, today we're talking about almost all things international law. Who makes the laws? Who enforces the laws? Where do they come from? Yeah. Are there places where there are no laws? What do pirates have to do with international law? Are there laws in space? And the timely question of how does all this impact the United States arresting Venezuela? Wayland leader, Nicholas Maduro. Yeah, and what's a Christian perspective? Let's talk about it.

Jason, like that haircut. Yeah, it's real high and tight. Everyone, if you have not listened to this or listen to TPO explains, watched on YouTube or Spotify, this is your biggest reason to. Jason's haircut. Yeah, we'll put some pictures. So I lost a bet to Nate. We do an annual bet.

We need to come up with, if you guys, If you guys have an idea for 2026, we still need a bet. But last year, it's 2024, I won the bet. It was about, it was a fitness goal for me that Nate didn't think I could do. And so I got to shave his beard and I did a monkey tail. We need to find a picture of that and put it up too. Monkey tail. So it looped around his like mouth.

And he had to keep it for three days. That was the goal. Well, I told him to shave it on late, late Saturday. And so he did Saturday night and then showed up to church faithfully with the monkey tail and kept it all day Sunday. And then Monday morning at like 7.30 a.m. he shaved it off. It was like a Jesus in the grave three days thing, which I felt justifiably totally jipped. So then this year, the goal was around growing news health and I didn't hit my growth goal. And so Nate gets to direct the cutting of my hair. we had been more explicit and said 72 hours.

Well, he times it. So the 72 hours runs out while I'm on the plane down to the company retreat. And then he's organized the retreat. I mean, it's just, you know, four full days of activities where I have no time to go. Yeah. Yeah. He also made me steal Jason's hat as soon as we got there. And we never saw it again.

I don't know where he hit it. Did you ever get it back? I did it. showed up, Nicole, messaged me, hey, by the way, your hats in your trunk when I, like, when we were back in Iowa. So I don't know the, I don't know the whole story of the missing hat. But yeah. And it was, for those that are listening, the top was left largely untouched, but then it like tapered into a point at the back and had erasing stripes. Also connected into a point.

Like the haircut that you're seeing right now is the fixed version. Right. And it's basically just me as bald as I can be on the sides with a little bit on the top. Most importantly, what did Hannah think of the haircut? She rolled her eyes. So Hannah's mom, so today is Kennedy's birthday. She's one. And so all this happened, you know, last week. And Hannah's mom was justifiably a little bothered at Nate for. giving me a silly haircut before Kennedy's first birthday. But Hannah came to his defense of saying, no, Jason shouldn't have made the stupid bet or shouldn't have lost the bet.

And yeah, team Nate. Sorry. Well, so it's growing out. That's the good thing about hair. And I'll get the next year. There you go. Can't wait to hear the next bet. All right, Joe.

What are we talking about today? Yes, the people have spoken. there's been some recent current events, I believe, that probably biased the votes to this topic today. We're going to be discussing international law. Yes. That's right. What is international law? Perfect.

What is international law? I would guess it is a set of rules, regulations that probably the majority of countries around the world have agreed to, like, hey, here's kind of like a level standard that we can agree to and regulate ourselves by and agree to say, yeah, we can police each other based on this minimum set of laws. That's my first guess, stab at it. Yeah, I think more or less you're there, a set of rules and norms that govern how countries interact with each other.

The goal being to promote peace and order between the nations, and it can cover things like war, borders, trade, maritime, you know, maritime borders, human rights, treaties, diplomacy, a number of things. Pretty broad. Space, Antarctica. Yeah, so, Joe, who makes these international laws? Man, does the United Nations have some play? just thinking of like big unified coalitions and groups.

Yeah. So international law is, Kathleen, you're saying this whole topic feels a little nebulous to you. And I think there is some unavoidability to that because international law, when you're when you're looking at like the four main sources of international law, two of them seem really legit. and two of them seem kind of like, you know, vibes. We're just going, we're going vibes here of what international laws. So the first, and this is where the United Nations falls into largely is conventions and treaties. So when multiple nations come together and write down some agreement between them and then sign it, and then that becomes international law.

It's a law that spans nations. And frequently, you'll have a lot of countries that sign on to these things. So one example more recently is the Paris Agreement, which was this commitment to reduce, like, emissions and to stop or prevent or slow climate change. And so you had a ton of countries sign on to it. The U.S. has kind of famously, you know, signed and then unsigned and then signed because the administration go back and forth. NATO is an example of international law, so it's a mutual defense pact, the Geneva Convention. So those are all treaties. They're written down. And it's like,

here's what this law is. You also sort of in this category, you have judicial rulings from international courts. So if there's like a, you know, recognized or recognized by a lot of countries court that then, you know, issues a ruling or a conviction or something, then that helps to shape, hey, this really is illegal internationally or not. But then you have these other two. And this one, this first one is for sure the most difficult. Well, so we'll start with, we'll start with number four. So we have those first two treaties and then the courts. Number four, I'll say, is general principles of law that are recognized by civilized nations. So basically they're saying, hey, we're not going to write everything out. Like all you guys have laws. You know what's a right for wrong.

We're not going to write out. But like an example of this is if you make an agreement, you have to keep the agreement. Like we're not going back to square one. And there's a lot of things that just need to go unsaid. And then you have this what I'm calling the third category, customary international law. So these are rules formed from consistent, like consistent state practice and a belief that the practice is legally required. So here's the best example that I found of it. Prior to 1961, diplomatic immunity was not written down anywhere, but it was observed by basically everyone. And that's the premise that, hey, if I send an ambassador to your country or if I send a diplomat, you, they're not under your jurisdiction. You don't get to arrest them.

You don't get to, like, if they break the law, you can kick them out and then we'll deal with it. But you don't get to, like, they're our person and they're representing our country and don't do it. So a famous example of this was in 2019, in American diplomat's wife, who's cover. under diplomatic immunity, was living at a U.S. military base in the United Kingdom and drove on the wrong side of the street and struck and killed a British teenager. And the British police could not arrest her, could not prosecute her. And so she returned to the U.S. and controversially, the U.S. did not waive diplomatic immunity. So the U.S. can say, like, if our ambassador goes and kills like intentionally first degree murder kills someone.

They can say, hey, all bets are off. You can just prosecute them. The U.S. didn't do that in this case. And so it was really controversial because the Brits were like, hey, this person killed one of our citizens. We want justice. And the U.S. is saying, no, she's just going to come here. And they ended up reaching a settlement with the family.

But that outline of diplomatic immunity was, has now been, codified. It was codified in 1961, but for years, it was considered international law because everyone did it and felt like you should do it, but it actually wasn't written anywhere. So that's, you have these four categories and a lot of it is vibes. I get that. I'm visualizing like a playground growing up, like at recess. There's just like this, we know how these games work and we know how the playground runs. But it's all dependent on everyone like just a yeah, that's how we're going to rule because, yeah, in that

diplomatic example, they just said, nope, we're actually not going to waive that for you guys to handle. So, yeah, that's kind of when you say vibes, that's the image I get. Have you ever opened your Bible and thought, man, I really wish I understood this

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You said it's now codified? Yeah, there was, so there was a convention. And then like a treaty or something signed after, it's called the Vienna something. There was some piece of paper signed in Vienna in 1961 that outlined specifically how diplomats should be treated. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe that's why this topic just feels crazy to me. like that there's just this set of rules.

And it's like it's written down somewhere, but only somebody in the Netherlands who you can't understand knows where it's written out. Yeah, well, everyone, okay, so you, you're only held, countries are only held to treaties that they have signed. So for example, with the Paris Climate Agreement, I think we have unsigned it again. And so there's no expectation that we're doing those things. Yeah. But what gets weird is there are these like, for example, the general principles of law that are everyone, like the proportionality was another one. Like penalties shouldn't wildly exceed the wrong.

It's like if you, if a country is issuing like disproportionate penalties, they may face international repercussions for that, even though they have not said that we agree. So and that again adds to the. just kind of squishiness of this all is there's some things that you get to opt into and there are some things that you don't get to opt into but those things are not explicitly written but they're understood to be understood yeah okay but so hear me out if there's like a cannibalistic tribe like is it customary law that you just don't eat people like are they Breaking international law. Okay.

So I think maybe we should jump to enforcement. Because that's where this really starts to maybe make sense or make less sense. Yeah. Okay, okay. So Joe, who is enforcing international law? And Kathleen's scenario of this cannibalistic, we'll say nation. Who steps in to say, no, no, no, not allowed on planet Earth? You alluded to international courts.

And so there's already an established justice system that crosses countries. Like, you know, it's like, yeah, like you mentioned, international. So I wonder also by design, international enforcement systems. And I don't know what or who that would be, but I wonder if there's an international court system. does there thereby have to be in international enforcement? So there is not, and it is kind of the glaring flaw with all of this. And so even the international courts are something that you can just choose to not recognize, and then you're not bound by them.

So like the U.S. does not recognize the international criminal court. And so that's one like practical example of this, is the international criminal court has issued in a reference. warrant for Vladimir Putin saying, we think that you have committed war crimes and we want to try you. Well, Russia does not acknowledge or recognize the criminal court. So they're like, buzz off. And the U.S. does not. I think it's 125 countries do. And so if he were to travel to any of those 125 countries, they have an obligation to arrest him. But he's just not traveling to any of those countries. And so like when he came when President Trump and President Putin met, they met face-to-face in Alaska.

And that was all okay. If you were going to Canada. Yeah, I assume Canada is in. And if you had been in Canada, then it puts them in a weird position. And there was some talk about maybe there would be peace talks or something held in Turkey. But Turkey, I'm pretty sure Turkey, Turkey recognizes the court. so then they were saying like maybe we have to like renounce it so that we can have him come or so it's weird basically there is who enforces it is no one and sort of everyone so the thought is that uh there's no

international police but a lot of these treaties and things that are signed outline um punishments that other countries who have signed on should impose. And so you end up with sanctions, cutting off diplomatic ties. So like, hey, we're going to recall our ambassadors and stop talking to you and working with you on other things. You can, you know, ban, like, Russian aircraft isn't allowed to fly over U.S. airspace. And that's a pain for Russian planes and they have to fly. So, like, there are these things that can be done. There's also, So the United Nations, so the UN has a security council and they can impose sanctions on behalf of the entire United Nations, which I think everyone or almost everyone's a part of. The big problem with that is there are five permanent members of the Security Council and each of them have veto power.

And it's the U.S., Russia, China, France, and the UK. So Russia just vetoes the sanctions against them, you know. or China would on behalf of, you know, someone that they like. So it's very imperfect. Enforcement is slow. It's, yeah, imperfect. And it's very unevenly enforced because you can imagine if the U.S. breaks international law, it's much harder to punish the U.S. meaningfully than if a smaller

less influential, less powerful country that's very economically reliant on the world does, it's like, oh, we can we can put sanctions on you and kind of force compliance, whereas that just doesn't really work with big, big countries. So the cannibalistic tribe, cannibalistic country, probably what's going to end up happening is there's going to be sanctions. And it's like, especially if it's a tribe and it's well known, there might, there would just, start to be political pressure on that country to say like, hey, you need to deal with this cannibalism issue that you have. And if you don't, it looks bad for us to be working with you. And companies are going to pull out and stuff like that. I did see like a kind of helpful

description. It said international law is heavily enforced by reciprocity. So if you break the rules, somebody else might do reputation, you know, for your credibility and trade, diplomacy, um, alliances, stuff like that. And then retaliation, like there are countermeasures that will happen. And then, you know, people just, or I guess countries just comply because the long term costs of violation exceed like the short term gains. So that was kind of helpful. But yeah, I also thought it was interesting.

There's two international courts. One of them like was started. like as an annex to the United Nations Charter, the International Court of Justice, and that is like dealing with countries that are breaking international law. And then the international criminal court deals with people who are breaking international law. And that one didn't come about until like early 2000s, like where they were like, we can't keep punishing whole countries. Like sometimes it's one person that's, you know, making these, like heads of state and stuff. So I don't know how much digging you did with these international courts, but like, can you paint a picture for me what I should visualize?

Like, where is this located? Who's on? Which judges? Like, where do they come from? Yeah. I can paint a picture for you. It's in the Netherlands. How do you say it?

The hog? The hag. Okay, cut that out. It's in the Netherlands. And at least two years ago, there was a bald guy in charge. So there's your picture. Oh, nice. So they're not wearing the powdered wigs that you were envisioning.

He did have a robe on. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, they find a picture. Maybe we can put a picture up of the international courtroom. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I know that they, it's, they investigate and prosecute, you know,

allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide. things that a person or a person is orchestrating or a country is allowing to happen within its borders. And my sense, my understanding is that it is a largely symbolic court because it does not have any enforcement power over the people that it's like if you are a head of state that is ordering. war crimes, you're not just going to be like, man, they noticed and walk into the, you know, international criminal jail. So it's it's a slap on the, uh, the wrist. And it's a, it applies public pressure and reputational damage more than leading to, you know, in rest or punishment. Yeah. I will say so the courts clarify and judge based on the law. But there's also, um, the United nations did create the International Law Commission, which creates these, or I guess, codifies

these international laws. So there's 34 like experts in international law that are elected by the UN General Assembly and they just hold like sessions to look at what should be international law. And then that's what the courts are based off of. Yeah. So that that falls into when we were talking about the four categories of where they come. That falls into the like judicial rulings is there's, it's like judicial rulings and really good legal scholars that. Calerately articles. Yeah.

Yeah. But it's not any scholarly article. It's like we've, we've appointed some of the best people and then they, they think through it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Jason, I might be jumping ahead here. Sorry, but you mentioned like there's a lot of symbolism with this. And you're not going to have a ruling from. international court then lead to a physical arrest. But, you know, the image I have in my mind as of late, Venezuelan President Maduro, I saw him that video, him literally handcuffed and walking,

walking that hallway. So what is going on there then? Yeah. So he was, he was arrested by U.S. law enforcement for breaking U.S. law. And the question is whether or not the U.S. violated international law by arresting him. So like at the, the single question is, is Maduro the head of Venezuela? If he is the head of a sovereign state, then arresting him is a clear violation of international law. like honestly like three of the four categories there are codified written things as you might imagine

when these heads of state get together and they're signing treaties and talking about international law what can happen to them as individuals comes up a lot and so there are multiple different treaties that's like hey and oh by the way if you run a country you're immune right like let's write that one down again and sign that. So that has come up multiple times. There's also, it also falls under customary international law that's saying, hey, we don't, again, the diplomats, people who are representing the country. And again, that's why, you know, Putin is not worried about showing up to Alaska and being, like, there was no thought that the U.S. military was just going to kill Putin during that meeting or abduct him. It's like, we all get that that's not allowed.

So, but the U.S. is claiming that Maduro was not the head of Venezuela, that he lost the 2024 election and was, you know, running an illegal, uh, that he was illegitimately, only elected, did not have legitimate claim on power and was actively running a drug operation that was smuggling drugs and weapons into the United States. So the U.S. is saying, hey, just like no one would bat an eye if we arrested the head of a cartel that happened to be in another country, no one should bat an eye here. Like this guy was funneling drugs into the United States. We said he was a wanted criminal. We had an arrest warrant out for him.

We had a $50 million bounty on his head. Who's surprised, you know? And we do have an extradition treaty with Venezuela too. But it's like he's not going to extradite himself. Like it's a little convoluted. Yes. And then the other pieces, even if it is ruled by a court or by, you know, the public determination that this was a violation of international law, what is going to happen to President Trump or the U.S. military or the United States? Practically pretty much nothing.

Like, there's not going to be that the economic opportunity of working with the U.S. is too great. The military is too powerful. And so people are going to say, we don't like this. This is, but the real world ramifications will be relatively minimal. And that is the big kind of like downside of saying international law works really well. when the rules are clear, the cost of breaking the rules are high, the punishments are visible, and a lot of countries cooperate, it really breaks down when powerful countries refuse to cooperate. Because, you know, as much as we agree to international law and obey, we should talk about this at some point,

but like almost everyone obeys almost all the international laws all the time because they're really useful. but these high-profile violations of international law are pretty much unpunishable if major players, you know, choose to violate them. Yeah. No, that's such a good point, Jason. Human trafficking isn't just an over-their problem. It's happening right here in the U.S. An estimated 300,000 people are being trafficked in America right now, and most were first sold as children. Even when they get a chance to run, sometimes there's no safe way out, and they get pulled

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I think Jason has more fun facts than I do this time around. I think it's pretty clear I liked this topic and Kathleen did not. I just really. I have a couple fun facts. Yeah. Let's hear him. So to me, what was interesting is all the like the war crimes and things that gets a lot of the attention. There's a lot of international law that no one violates because it's just helpful.

And some of that is like, hey, this is standard communication for ships in the middle of the ocean. It's like if you if you don't listen. you're just going to crash into things. Like everyone should just do this. So those, the categories of things where it's like, hey, we, we need someone to make decisions about what to do in the middle of the ocean. It's kind of funny that that's like international law. So you have, uh, they, some convention was like, okay, the sea up to 12 miles, that's

just like we're going to treat it like land as far as laws are concerned. Okay. If you're 10 miles off the coast, coast of France, you got to obey all France's laws. Then 12 to 24 miles, you can, like, they can enforce like smuggling and immigration law, but basically nothing else. And then up to 200 miles, you can fish and like, you're the only ones that can fish and like put up wind turbines. But it's, and then once you get out to the high seas beyond 200 miles, all bets are off. And it's like, cool, that's no ones, you know. And anyone,

can fish out there anyone can do whatever. Same thing with space. There are some space laws. You can't claim the moon. It's just, I know, we've all agreed the moon and all the planets. Isn't there an American flag on it? I think we've already done that. You can, you can as a point of pride, have your flag on the moon.

It's not legally binding. That's right. Wasn't it a thing growing up, like someone could buy for your birthday like a star? like you can have your name like you own the star. And every single one of you has violated international law. So head to the Netherlands. That's right. Court.

I think I think you bought naming rights on planet Earth for the star. I don't think you get to choose the laws that are enforced on your star. Like every month they would send out a list to all the planets of the new names of the stars just so everybody's on the same page. So space, you can't claim moon or the planets, no nuclear weapons in space. Oh, sure. Right. Antarctica. No one owns Antarctica.

You can't have military bases or anything going on there. It's dedicated to science and snow angels. And nothing else is allowed down there. Right. Yeah. So those are some. Oh, my last fun fact is we can think it generally, maybe this is, yeah, know, just legend. But it is thought that the original, original motivation for international law

came from wanting to deal with pirates. And so we can thank pirates for needing international law. Those people that were living out, not on land, they weren't a part of any nation. And everyone was like, hey, we all dislike these people, right? Anyone can go arrest them. And it was the first international laws, piracy is bad. Well, I did not see that. I did. I did see that there's this Dutch dude, like a jurist who, um, Hugo Grosish. I don't know. Anyway, he wrote this book on the law of war and peace, and he's referred to as the father of international law.

But I didn't read anything with him in pirates. So maybe there's some paternity going on here. That's right. Yeah. Well, thank you, Hugo. Yeah. Yeah. national law.

Yeah. Fascinating. Love it. That was good. Archim perspectives. Did you have any, Jason? Yeah, you know, I put one. And so I went down kind of a dark rabbit hole of looking at people the international

criminal court has prosecuted. And there are some of the worst crimes. And it's just a, it's a dark, dark place. And it just forced me to, you know, reflect. And I was, what it brought me back to was our perspective of above all love and saying, I, this, these humans, these are the people that I'm called to love and to swallow my pride and say, it is only by God's grace that I am saved and it is not that I am better than them. And by God's grace, they could be saved.

And so just reflecting on that and saying, you know, yeah, it was just a moment of conviction, personal conviction as I looked at these horrible sinners and then remembered that I am a horrible sinner to in need of God's grace. I don't know if I can follow that. Mine too was above all love. We say often, like, for some, like, domestic stories we'll cover. Like, you might not have much influence on this U.S. domestic policy, but, you know, you can influence people around you, how you treat them. And that's just what I kept thinking of here is, like, you know, there's this general understanding of how you should treat other people in other countries. and, you know, we might not have much influence on the grand scheme of, like, international law,

but we can definitely remember how we're supposed to treat other people, like our neighbors and the people we interact with. So good. Yeah. Appreciate you both. The good words. All right. Well, thanks, everyone for joining us on another episode of TPO Explains. As a reminder, you can watch.

this episode, and you should, to make sure you see Jason's amazing haircut with the bet that he lost on YouTube and Spotify. Make sure to like, comment, and subscribe. We'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time. Bye. Christian Community Credit Union and Adel Fai have come together to bring the best in Christian

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