International law starts to bring Washington back into the fold

[emad]

Simon Tisdall
Friday March 11, 2005
The Guardian

In the opinion of many legal experts, the US government broke international law when it waged war on Iraq without explicit UN backing. Unrepentant, it has reserved the right to take similar action again, unilaterally if need be.

But another key pillar of global jurisprudence - laws concerning individual liberty, dignity and human rights - is proving harder for Washington to ignore: like a sheriff with a posse of deputies, international law is slowly catching up with the Bush administration.

Despite its hostility to the international criminal court, the US may soon be forced by a UN security council majority to refer war crimes prosecutions in Sudan to the ICC. Diplomats say that would represent a big boost for supranational criminal justice.

Last week's US supreme court decision to abolish the death penalty for offenders under the age of 18 was partly a response to global opposition to capital punishment which the Bush administration has refused to heed. But from an internationallegal standpoint, the ruling in effect dragged the US into line with a key provision of the 1990 UN convention on the rights of the child.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldbriefing/story/0,15205,1435317,00.html

[emad]

1. UK went to war on one page of legal advice

David Hencke, Westminster correspondent
Friday March 11, 2005
The Guardian

The cabinet secretary yesterday astonished politicians by disclosing that Britain went to war against Iraq on just one page of legal advice from Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general.

The disclosure by Sir Andrew Turnbull to MPs was described as "beggaring belief" by Charles Kennedy, the Liberal Democrat leader, and "a new twist in the spin over the war" by Clare Short, the cabinet minister who quit after hostilities had begun.

Labour backbenchers who opposed the war said the disclosure amounted to "gross maladministration" by the government while the Tory shadow home secretary, David Davis, described the revelation as "another example of Blair's government by whim".

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,1435310,00.html

The actual advice: