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Week of November 16, 2008 - November 22, 2008

Is the rule of law 'off the table', Ms Pelosi?


The Guardian UK tells us

One of Britain's most authoritative judicial figures last night delivered a blistering attack on the invasion of Iraq describing it as a serious violation of international law...

Adding his weight to the body of international legal opinion opposed to the invasion, Bingham said that to argue, as the British government had done, that Britain and the US could unilaterally decide that Iraq had broken UN resolutions "passes belief".

As the Guardian mentions, Lord Bingham isn't the only authoritative judicial figure who has stated that the war against Iraq was a serious violation of international law. Another powerful voice expressing the exact same view was Benjamin B Ferencz, one of the prosecutors at Nuremberg. In addition to condemning the Iraq war as a breach of international law, Mr Ferencz recently stated:

The International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg held that aggression was "the supreme international crime" for which leading planners and perpetrators could be held accountable in an international court of law. The legal recognition in 1946 that war-making was not a national right, but an international crime, was the greatest achievement of the trial and the proudest accomplishment of Robert M. Jackson, the highly esteemed United States Supreme Court judge who served as Chief Prosecutor for the United States. Jackson made clear that if law is to serve a useful purpose "it must condemn aggressions by any other nations, including those who sit here now in judgment." The trial was "part of the great effort to make the peace secure." Subsequent Nuremberg proceedings and Tokyo war crimes tribunals confirmed the profound IMT decision...

The most important accomplishment of the Nuremberg trials was the condemnation of illegal war-making as a supreme international crime.  

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