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Originally posted by 4thTimeLucky
2) Dragonlich - you say that there is "no international law" and then back this up by saying that it is like British case law. As a British person I can proudly say that we do have a law and it is does a very good job and has done for a long time now. Just because international law bears more resemblance to British law than US law doesn't mean it is any less real.
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I didn't mean to say that there is no international law at all. I meant to point out that the idea that international law is like national law (i.e. at least a bit clear) is just false. In that sense, there is no "international law", there's just a lot of agreements. Agreements that can be broken, by the way, without any real problems, especially if you're powerful enough (like the US).
The problem with case law is that there's so much of it. In Brittain, one occasionally finds some weird medieval law that still applies; because it's a law, it has to be treated as such. Well, until the government/legal system declares the law obsolete. The same goes with international law, but here you have many different parties, each with their own bilateral and multilateral treates and obligations. It's a maze, with multiple exits, in that a lot of times, one can argue a case either way.
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3) Both sides cannot be right when pointing at 1441. It is the norm in the British (and I believe American) legal systems for two very eminent and intelligent lawyers (or teams of lawyers) to come before a judge and argue very passionate and very coherent cases. Both legal teams say contradictory things and the judge will use existing law to decide who is right and who is wrong - they never say "well actually you are both equally right, so I'm not going to make any ruling at all". Now often companies and countries will go to their very skilled, very well paid lawyers and say "can we do this" [often meaning "can we get away with this under the law"]. And often the lawyers will tell them that they can. And the team of lawyers for the other company/country will be telling their employers the same thing. It takes an impartial judge or team of judges to decide who is right and who is wrong. BUT there is a right and there is a wrong. As it is in domestic law, so it is in international law.
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Wrong. In international law, there is the *option* of a justice system that checks such things, but this is not something that happens all the time; besides, a country can potentially ignore the rulings, because nobody might be able to force it to comply. In the case of the whole Iraqi war thing, the case is not black-and-white. Both sides are right, or at least have valid arguments to back up their side of the story. Until an international court of justice decides on the legality of the attack, we cannot say who was right, although we can *think* we know. Besides, such a ruling will take years to arrive, and can still be ignored.
Now, 1441 spoke of serious consequences, which technically can include a war. Many opponents claim that the UN uses different words to allow war, and also say that the French would never have agreed with a resolution allowing war. That's all nice and dandy, but the way 1441 was written allows the US to go to war. That's simply a matter of the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law.
However, let's for a moment assume it is eventually ruled that this war was illegal... what should happen then? Does Saddam get to regain power again? Does he get compensation? Will (and can) the US be forced to pay some sort of fine?
We all agree that Saddam was a bad man, so these options are pretty silly, but the question then becomes: what would the potential penalty be? And more importantly, would the US care at all?
This illustrates again that international law is a nice concept, but also quite useless at times. One could even go so far as to say that international law is irrelevant to a country as powerful as the US. An illustration of a previous situation that was kinda similar, if totally different in other ways: Nazi Germany tore up the Versailles treaty because they *could*, and they walked out of the League of Nations because they *could* do that too. The US can do the same with the UN, and there isn't much anyone can do about it.