Justice & Law Quote by Jacques Verges

Power, for Verges, is always somewhere else and always onstage. His phrasing turns legal procedure into political theater: he is "waiting" for a "decision" that "is not depending of me", a slightly ungainly construction that still lands its point. He performs powerlessness so insistently it becomes a kind of power. By repeating "the decision is not mine", he frames jurisdiction not as a technical question but as a referendum on legitimacy: who gets to judge, and under what flag.

Verges built a career on what he called the "rupture" strategy, treating trials as opportunities to put the system itself on trial. Read in that light, this line is less resignation than positioning. He is pre-loading the narrative: if the venue is Iraq, the verdict can be read as victor's justice; if it's the United States, as geopolitics in robes; if it's an international court, as a curated morality play of the post-Cold War order. His apparent humility is tactical, inviting the public to see the coming tribunal as chosen for optics, not truth.

The context matters: post-invasion Iraq was a battlefield not only of weapons but of legal authority, with competing claims about sovereignty and due process. Verges, famously drawn to controversial defendants, understands that the location of a trial is itself a message. This quote is the lawyer as dramaturge, reminding you that the rule of law is also a stagecraft of who gets to appear neutral.