Thursday, August 25, 2005

Iraq's Constitution and (International) Standards

There's an interesting post on the role of International Law in Iraq's Constitution on Opinio Juris. Two articles are mentioned to show how internationalist is the present proposal of the transitional law. At the moment, however, it is not clear how much internationalist will be the actual constitution.

My interest lies in the fact that the Bush administration has pushed such an internationalist transitional law, when a standard American approach is not always very internationalist. I wonder whether this is the case because international standards are genuinely very high or because international standards are high from the viewpoint of Iraw, but low from the viewpoint of the US. In the former case, the reluctance of the US to comply with international standards could not be justified very easily. In the latter case, it would be easier to justify the reluctance to act upon international standards at times, but then one would wonder why a new constitution (Iraq's) only has entrenches low standards.

Which one is the right position?

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