With Donald Trump’s return to the White House, concerns have been raised about the politicization of the American legal system, with fears that our centuries-old tradition of equal justice under the law is now threatened by a president who has pledged to block legal accountability for him and his supporters while punishing the prosecutors and investigators.

Unfortunately, our congressman, Rep. Jimmy Panetta (D-Carmel) has adopted a similar position regarding international law, being one of only a handful of Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives to support a Republican-sponsored bill that would punish anyone who directly or indirectly participates in the prosecution or investigation of those suspected of war crimes if they are part of a government allied with the United States.

The bill (H.R. 8282), which passed the House earlier this month, is rooted in the assumption that the prosecution of suspected war criminals by the International Criminal Court (ICC) should be based not upon the available evidence or the severity of the crimes, but on the geopolitical orientation of the government of those accused. While Panetta has no objections to prosecuting war criminals belonging to organizations or governments Washington opposes, he apparently believes those supported by Washington should somehow be unaccountable to international humanitarian law.

It’s not as if the ICC has an anti-Western bias. Since its founding in 2002, the ICC has indicted 67 people and investigated scores of others, including African warlords, Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials, and Hamas terrorist leaders. Only two of those 67 indicted have been affiliated with allied governments. That is too many for Panetta, however.

The list of those impacted by U.S. sanctions, should this bill also pass the Senate, would include some of the world’s most prominent human rights lawyers and international jurists, along with their immediate family members. Their property and other assets held in the United States would be subjected to seizure and they would be banned from entering the country.

Almost all of these targeted individuals have been involved in other war crimes prosecutions, including those stemming from atrocities in Rwanda, Sudan, the former Yugoslavia, Myanmar, Liberia and elsewhere. None of them have ever shown any ideological bias against Israel or any other U.S. ally.

Among those targeted by these sanctions is Theodor Meron — a Holocaust survivor, a former Israeli Ambassador to Canada, and the president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia — because he was one of the experts consulted by the International Criminal Court regarding suspected war crimes committed by Israeli leaders.

Another is the prominent British human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, who has been involved in human rights cases in dozens of countries. She would be subjected to sanctions for her participation in an ICC Panel of Experts in International Law which, in addition to recommending the prosecution of three Hamas terrorist leaders, also supported the prosecution of two Israeli leaders. She is married to American actor George Clooney, a major Democratic Party fundraiser, and would be banned from ever again living with or even visiting her husband here in California.

The Biden administration said it “strongly” opposed the bill because it “could require sanctions against court staff, judges, witnesses, and U.S. allies and partners who provide even limited, targeted support to the court in a range of aspects of its work.”

Panetta, however, has insisted that the Biden administration was wrong. Panetta, like Trump, is rejecting the idea of equal justice under the law.

If elected Democratic officials like Panetta are willing to support such a flagrant politicization of the international legal system, it will make it all the more difficult to counter efforts by Trump to do the same domestically.

Stephen Zunes, a Santa Cruz resident, is a professor of politics and director of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco.