So far the public debate about the legality of the Iraq war has been dominated by a single issue: did the lack of a further UN Security Council resolution make it illegal?
So far the public debate about the legality of the Iraq war has been dominated by a single issue: did the lack of a further UN Security Council resolution make it illegal? (see NLJ, 5 March 2010, p 329). It is not our purpose to contribute to this debate much less to seek to resolve it. First, even if the war was illegal, there are few if any significant legal implications. Second, this holds even if the war was morally and politically justified, as one of us believes, and also, as the other thinks, if it was not.
The war appears to have been legal under UK law not least because, in spite of attempts to do so, its legality has not been successfully challenged in any UK court. So, when people say the war was “illegal” they generally mean “contrary to international law”. But this, in turn, does
