The invasion of Iraq and the mythology of international law

Although opposition to the Iraq war often relies on legal argument, the illegality of the invasion is not always easy to prove in international law. The sense of the war's illegality was fuelled by the failure of the United States and the United Kingdom to obtain Security Council sanction prior to the invasion. However, this argument is too simple, and the interpreters of law have generally fallen into two camps; those who supported the invasion tend to see the war as legal, and vice versa for opponents of the invasion. This essay examines the legal arguments for and against the war, and comes to the conclusion that international law is often given a normative status in political debate that it does not deserve. Despite its shortcomings, the author argues for a commitment to the utopian potential of international law, even if this potential is not realizable.