A recurring lament during the first three days of this year’s General Debate at the United Nations has been the failure of the rule of law.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres opened his address to the Assembly on Sept. 22 by saying that “the fault lines in our world are widening” and that “cracks have become canyons.” Military conflicts around the world show “what happens when power gets out of control,” he said, and he pledged his remaining hundred days in office to the proposition that “the power of law must prevail over the law of power.”

Emmanuel Macron of France posed it as a question: “Do we want to live under this state of affairs—with a return to the law of the jungle—or do we want to live in a civilized international society?” The Geneva Convention is “being dismantled,” he said, adding: “We simply cannot accept this new order of impunity which some are trying to erect.”