Anyone who enjoys mysteries and crime novels has a passion for justice and, when laws are broken, we want to know whodunit and know they have been stopped from committing further crimes and even got their comeuppance. The backbone of justice is our laws and the courts that enforce those laws.
Lately, there have been articles, conversations around tables with coffee and croissants, in articles and online about justice. It's top of everyone's mind these days and, inserted in these conversations is the question about human nature and whether humans are naturally lawless, ruled by might makes right, or whether humans gravitate to creating laws because we are driven by altruism and cooperation.
A uniquely 2026 thing is the how loud the debate has become about international laws, many brought in after world war two to prevent the rise of countries hell bent on taking over other countries by using force that, eventually, start wider wars and even world wars. Some are arguing international laws and the courts that enforce them should be eliminated because only might makes right rules.
Just last week, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the imposition of sanctions against the International Criminal Court, by a singularly shocking statement: "The United States and the American people are not subject to the jurisdiction of this fake ICC."
This week, the International Criminal Court responded to sweeping U.S. sanctions by stating, "It is an assault on the rule of law and on the very foundations of the international legal order which strikes at the simple principle that no one stands above the law."
These sanctions are the tip of the iceberg; what is being attacked, debated, argued about is the very nature of international justice and underneath that, human nature itself.
In January, 2026, Stephen Miller, a top aide to President Trump, took upon himself to describe human nature that defines his country's foreign policy:
“We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world...that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.”
The beginning of time? That's one heck of a statement; how does Miller know what humans have been since the beginning of time? Has he been around that long? No, he's referring to the belief that humans are designed to claw at each other to climb the evolutionary ladder.
Evolution - explained by those who don't understand it - is seen as the survival of the fittest and the fittest are strong and aggressive so, we are governed by the iron fisted rule that might rules. Evolution has never been that - it is the survival of some genes and the elimination of others, forging the nature of species. Some babies lived long enough to have their own babies, those who didn't survive haven't contributed to the nature of our species. It's a numbers game – those who survive in larger numbers and have more offspring – shape the nature of humanity.
Modern humans have been around for about 300,000 years and our written history is about 5,000 years old, so to understand much of our history we rely on fossil evidence. Given how long humans existed without written history, those early years have weighed heavily on how our genes were crafted and they are studied by Prehistoric Archaeologists and Paleoanthropologists, using bones, ours and the animals we ate, artifacts like tools, clothing, and decorations to piece together who we were. What these scientists don't do is pick a theory out of thin air and pretend it's true. The narrative that the strong survive by aggression and dominance is absolute - you know where I'm going with this; two words, begin the first one with a b and end the last one with a t. It's made up by people who have never studied or understood our prehistoric past, the lengthy past that forged our genes.
In his groundbreaking book The Makings of Mankind, Richard Leaky, the famous paleoanthropologist (the son of famous paleoanthropologists Louis and Mary Leakey) presents evidence that cooperation and sharing were crucial for human evolution and not an cute accident. Through carefully documented human remains, he showed that, as our cooperation and altruism increased, so did the numbers of early humans, as evidenced by bones of those who had been injured or disabled even from birth, and who survived because of the care of others. This is when our human numbers increased, skewing our genes to altruism.
Anthropolgist, Sarah blaffer Hrdy, in Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding, shows how cooperation and empathy were necessary for human survival because human babies are immature, requiring long periods of care and those who survive rely on attentive mothers and a bevy of helpers. With scarce resources and threats to their safety; it is not the aggressive that survive but the cooperative - the ones who work together and this is how natural selection sorted us out - those who survived passed on their genes, crafting the human race. She doesn't do all this by making up stuff, she uses evidence and numbers to back up what she posits.
What about the raging strong man beating up others? His survival is neither here not there in the evolutionary scheme of gene survival - he only matters if he has offspring that survive and if something in his traits helped them survive. Some have argued that fighting off animals that threatened his babies ensured their survival, and eating those animals have fed his babies so yeah, might makes genes survive. A great deal of research has shown that prehistoric humans were sorely lacking in the ability to fend off large animals by themselves and even hunt them successfully by themselves. Picture hand to large paw combat. Picture the same hands trying to strangle an animal.
Evidence shows that what allowed success in hunting and in defence were tools like spears, created cooperatively, and groups of prehistoric humans hunting together. Evidence also shows that only 20% of early human diet was meat and the rest was from gathered plants, gathered collectively because of the time-consuming nature of the task. And let's not forget the baby who, left on their own, would die and take their genes with them. So the baby needed people who cared enough, to altruistically watch over them while others gather and hunt for food and collectively defended said baby so its genes could survive. It all boils down to altruism and cooperation. The raging guy who refused to cooperate and work with others? His baby was unlikely to survive, making his genes just a small fraction of our collective genes. When we see the modern version of this guy, he is an outlier and often destined for jail.
What about the "the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time”?
Humans haven't been there since the beginning of time and the earliest humans died before telling us much about their existence, so we rely on what they did tell us with their bones and the other evidence of them that remains. All the evidence points to an increase in survival through cooperation and altruism. If we argue international laws are just the organic outgrowth of human nature, it's best to listen to evidence about how our nature was created rather than make up stuff. Are we a completely altruist cooperative species? Obviously not. Are we a species driven by aggressive genes? Obviously not. Rewriting our history, misunderstanding our evolution, is being used to prop up political actions.
We are not a lawless species. We are a species who created laws because of our genes and our laws restrict those among us who try to play the might makes right card over the cooperation, altruism and fairness that allowed humans to survive in large numbers. The restriction of those who think might makes right is the very core of our national and international laws. The guy who thinks he can beat you up in the street and grab your valuables using his might, is the guy who our local laws send to jail. The country that uses force to take over other countries is the country that our international laws seek to restrain because without that restraint, our history tells us a world war is in the making.
