The International Court of Justice is hearing genocide allegations against Myanmar over its treatment of the Rohingya population in Rakhine State. But this isn't about whether terrible violence occurred or whether serious crimes were committed. It's about whether that violence meets the Genocide Convention's exceptionally demanding legal test for specific intent to destroy a group, and why loosening that standard would damage the credibility of genocide law itself.

International law is increasingly framed through consensus, with petitions and declarations treated as if volume confers legal authority. Yet consensus has never been a legal standard. Courts adjudicate through treaties, customary practice with opinio juris, and judicial procedures, not by counting opinions. Elevating consensus to a quasi-legal threshold blurs advocacy and adjudication, pressures courts to appear responsive rather than rigorous, and frames dissent as illegitimacy. When non-state actors displace state authority in declaring law, the foundational mechanisms of international law erode. Legal credibility depends on resisting the conflation of popularity with validity and maintaining the discipline that separates law from lobbying.