Telegraph - Britain's most senior judges will be asked today for a ruling that could lead to the war in Iraq being declared an illegal "crime of aggression".

Until now, the courts have taken the view that they cannot rule on the Crown's prerogative powers to wage war. But today the law lords will start hearing appeals by peace protesters who claim they were entitled to commit "criminal" acts in an attempt to prevent what they saw as the greater crime of launching an illegal war.

Nobody has been punished for aggression in international law since the Nuremberg Tribunal executed former Nazi officers in 1946. The new International Criminal Court does not yet have jurisdiction over the crime, partly because of difficulties in agreeing a definition of it.

But the Government has been told by its senior legal adviser that ministers could face such charges under English law.

In the Attorney General's advice to the Prime Minister of March 7, 2003, Lord Goldsmith said: "Aggression is a crime under customary international law which automatically forms part of domestic law. It might therefore be argued that international aggression is a crime recognised by the common law which can be prosecuted in the UK courts."

On the one hand, we have a war which is almost certainly illegal.

The English protesters say that they are entitled to prevent a violation of the law --the continuation of an illegal war--by acts of mischief to property to be used in furthering that war.

The American deserters take a more modest position. They say that they should not go to jail for refusing to participate in an illegal war, and that Canada should not send them back to jail under those circumstances.

So far, the courts have refused to let anyone argue that the war is illegal, mostly because they don't want to have to make the obvious decision, which would discomfit Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair.

Unfortunately, we have not yet gone much further in that direction, and in some ways we have backslid.

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Originally posted by skdadl:
From Nuremberg, there was only one rational way to go.

Unfortunately, we have not yet gone much further in that direction, and in some ways we have backslid.

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Of course, the Allies kept their own out of the Nuremberg trials. There were monsters on both sides. Remember Dresden? Hiroshima?

It is far too easy to blame WWII on Hitler. That war was not necessary and probably wouldn't have happened if Hitler had not had so much support in England and the US.

Is the Iraq war a "crime of agression"? Of course. Will Blair and Bush get dragged in front of an international war crimes court? Nope. By their own definition, they're the good guys.