Since the United States voted against the establishment of an International Criminal Court last month, there has been a steady trickle of criticism of its behaviour.
Even when the vote was taken after a lively five-week debate in Rome, Washington found itself oddly aligned with an inglorious minority, including Libya and Iraq.
Voices such as those of the distinguished South African judge, Richard Goldstone, who was prosecutor at the first special tribunal on war crimes in former Yugoslavia, have been raised to question the somewhat mean-minded self interest with which the US sought to stymie a permanent forum to bring to justice transgressors such as Pol Pot, Augusto Pinochet or Radovan Karadzic.
Internally there has been criticism in the US, with human rights organisations and even the New York Times finding fault with the US's intense campaign against the court. (At one point during the Rome conference there were reports that the US Defence Secretary, Mr William Cohen, had let it be known that the US would reconsider its troop commitment to Europe if the court vote went against its wishes).
The bombings of its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania have been a reminder of the US's vulnerability, despite its wealth and power, across the globe. The ICC would not be much solace, theoretically, in trying the perpetrators of the embassy bombs, as its remit is on a bigger scale - genocide and comparable crimes inflicting mass suffering, rather than the terrorism of the Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam attacks, high as their tolls of death and injury have been.
Instead it would be up to the US to track down the murderers - as has been stated most emphatically by both President Clinton and his Secretary of State, the lioness-like Ms Madeleine Albright. But it is quite likely that the fruits of any such investigation would end in the problem faced by those trying to prosecute the suspects in the Pan Am bomb over Lockerbie of 1988 - when the supposed wrongdoers are being sheltered by a government hostile to those seeking justice, the question of extradition is a tricky one.
It might well be argued that any world criminal court should have the power to adjudicate in these areas as well. But even getting it off the ground at all has been hard enough graft. The battle is not over yet, although the UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, and others welcomed the majority vote 120-7, with 21 formal abstentions, as a triumph.
The acceptance of the court still has to be ratified in state governments, a process that depends on the parliamentary efficiency of the country; 60 countries must ratify before the court can start work. Ratification will have to take place in under five years.
Washington, despite its unattractive bullying, does of course have a case in its fears for the court. It is worried that its soldiers serving abroad might find themselves charged with mass murder should a hideous eventuality arise where "peace-keeping" troops had to take harsh action. The memory of Somalia in 1993 hangs over the Pentagon.
However, Canadian troops were also involved in unsavoury incidents in the accursed job of trying to control the Somali warlords, and yet Canada has been one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the world court.
Judge Richard Goldstone, writing in Time magazine of his hopes that an ICC could bring justice to those now suffering because of the fighting and forced evacuations in Kosovo, said the US fears of its troops being targeted are "exaggerated".
Ireland is in favour of the new world court, as part of the European Union bloc. The EU has a long-standing commitment to the concept of an international court.
But even in the pro-ICC camp, the final statute for the court's establishment has had its critics. Israel, a country one would reasonably have expected to be in favour of an anti-genocide court, is unhappy because its occupation of lands claimed by Palestinians would come within the court's remit.
Although it has campaigned actively for the International Criminal Court for four years, Israel was one of the seven countries to oppose the statute drafted in Rome.
Mr Alan Baker, legal adviser to Israel's Foreign Ministry, accused Arab countries of having politicised the creation of the court by deeming the transfer of population from an occupying country to conquered land a crime.
And the secretary of the Arab League, Esmat Abdel Maguid, lost no time after the steamy Rome conference had ended in requesting that the new court make a priority of hearing the case of violations of civilians in the occupied territories by Israel.
The final treaty included the key - some say fatal - provision that a prosecution at an International Criminal Court would only go ahead with the consent of the country in which the atrocity had taken place, or its government. The final proposals also fail to include provisions, such as the ability of a country in which a foreign tyrant is living to initiate a trial, a failure which led Richard Dicker of the Human Rights Watch organisation to dismiss the outcome as "a treaty for travelling tyrants".