The succeeding analysis is based in part on a guest editorial, which was prepared at the invitation of the Canadian Council on International Law for their bulletin on 20 March 2003 (29 CCIL Bulletin 1 (2003). For a fuller development of the legal issues, see also McWhinney, Edward, The September 11 Terrorist Attacks and the Invasion of Iraq in Contemporary International Law: Opinions on the Emerging New World Order System (Leiden and Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2004)Google Scholar. Some aspects relating particularly to Prime Minister Chrétien’s role are also reviewed by the author in Chrétien and Canadian Federalism: Politics and the Constitution, 1993–2003 (Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2003) at 197 and 199–205; and in (2004) 2 Chinese J. Int’l L. 571 at 579–80.

¹ Charter of the United Nations, 26 June 1945, Can. T.S. 1945 No. 7.

² Chrétien, Jean “Address to the US Council on Foreign Relations” (Chicago, IL), 13 February 2003, Prime Minister’s Office, Ottawa.Google Scholar

³ Chrétien, Jean “Interview, ABC Television Network (United States),” 9 March 2003, Prime Minister’s Office, Ottawa.Google Scholar

⁴ Ibid.

⁵ Ibid.

⁶ Chrétien, supra note 2.

⁷ Report of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs. Senate of Canada (Stollery, Peter, chairman), April 2000, Senate of Canada, Ottawa.Google Scholar

⁸ Ibid. at 33.

⁹ Green, L.C. “The Rule of Law and Human Rights in the Balkans” (1999) 37 Can. Y.B. Int’l L. 223 and 244.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Védrine, Hubert, Les mondes de François Mitterand. A l’Elysée 1981–1995 (Paris:Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1996).Google Scholar

¹¹ Boutros-Ghali, Boutros Unvanquished: A U.S.-U.N. Saga (New York: Random House, 1999).Google Scholar

¹² See generally Kinkel, Klaus ed., In der Verantwortung. Hans-Dietrich Genscher zum Siebzigsten (Berlin: Siedler Verlag, 1997).Google Scholar

¹³ Report of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs. supra note 7 at 34.

¹⁴ Ibid. at 47.

¹⁵ House of Commons Debates, 28 April 1998, vol. 135 (no. 094) 1 st Session, 36th Parliament, at 6272–73.

¹⁶ Ibid., 28 April 1998.

¹⁷ Ibid., 7 October 1998, vol. 135 (no. 134) 1st Session, 36th Parliament.

¹⁸ Ibid., 17 February 1999, vol. 135 (no. 183) 1 st Session, 36th Parliament.

¹⁹ Ibid., 12 April 1999, vol. 135 (no. 205A) 1st Session, 36th Parliament.

²⁰ Ibid., 7 October 1998, at 8921.

²¹ Ibid. at 8925.

²² Ibid.

²³ Ibid., Daniel Turp (Beauharnois-Salaberry).

²⁴ Ibid. at 8926, Svend J. Robinson (Burnaby-Douglas).

²⁵ Ibid., 12 April 1999, at 13614.

²⁶ Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts, 12 December 1977, 1125 U.N.T.S. 3 (entered into force 7 December 1978 ); and Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and Relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts, 12 December 1977, 1125 U.N.T.S. 609 (entered into force 7 December 1978)

²⁷ Reference is made by Chuck Strahl (Fraser Valley), spokesperson of the then Reform Party to the 1977 Protocols on Aerial Bombardment, in the 7 October 1998 House of Common debates on Kosovo. House of Commons Debates, 7 October 1998, vol. 135 (no. 134) 1st Session, 36th Parliament, at 8925.

²⁸ G-8 Foreign Ministers: Statement by the Chairman on the Conclusion of the Meeting of the G8 Foreign Ministers on the Petersberg, 6 May 1999.

²⁹ United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244, 10 June 1999, adopted by the Security Council at its 4011th meeting, on 10 June 1999, Doc. S/RES/1244 (1999).

³⁰ Brierly, J.L. The Law of Nations, 6th ed., Sir Waldock, Humphrey (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928; reprinted 1963) at 403.Google Scholar

³¹ Slaughter, Anne-Marie “Notes from the President: A Fork in the Road” ASIL Newsletter (September-October 2003) at 1 and 4.Google Scholar

³² Slaughter, Anne-Marie “Notes from the President: The Value of Spirited Debate,” ASIL Newsletter (January-February 2004);Google Scholar and “Notes from the President: Reflections on the War in Iraq One Year Later,” ASIL Newsletter (March-April 2004). In her September-October 2003 newsletter, Slaughter had indicated that the “right to protect” doctrine was the work of a “Canadian-sponsored Commission.” This commission, the original, apparently informal, non-governmental group, commenced in the mid-1990s in the run-up to the ultimate NATO-led armed action against the former Yugoslavia and had twelve members, two of whom were Canadians. The group’s activities were not called for, or reported to, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs during the House Standing Committee’s extensive public hearings before and after the NATO-led attack of 1999. The group’s eventual report, published in December 2001 , under the title Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, was apparently never considered by the Canadian government, and it was not adopted by the Canadian government. There were no recognized international law scholars in the group, and this may have helped account for its failure to achieve any general acceptance in world community terms for a postulated new imperative principle of international law when the case for armed intervention against Iraq was being advanced in the corridors of the United Nations and elsewhere after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks against the United States. The major lacuna throughout was a seeming lack of fundamental interest or concern for the necessary interrelation of abstract legal principle — the law-in-books — and the international institutions and decision-making processes necessary to translate it concretely into law-in-action and world community “living law.” The gap in the thinking and reasoning is clear: who is to make the crucial decision on whether to invade, and when and how, and under what controls as to timing and duration? This major lacuna had been sought to be addressed in the group’s eventual report, published in December 2001, five months after the 11 September terrorist attacks. But, as Slaughter’s successor as president of the American Society on International Law, José E. Alvarez, then correctly noted, the report did not exclude a claimed “right to protect” – as proffered legal justification for an invasion outside the UN Charter and without prior enabling resolution adopted by the Security Council – being invoked even by a so-called “coalition of the willing.” This may in fact have occurred as a latter-day rationalization of the grounds for the Iraq invasion, after the original grounds put forward as to the weapons of mass destruction and the asserted links to the Taliban had fallen away. Alvarez, José E. “The Schizophrenias of R2P. Notes from the President,” ASIL Newsletter (Summer 2007).Google Scholar

³³ Chrétien’s political chief of staff, who was not himself an international lawyer, in looking back after Chrétien had left office. Goldenberg, Eddie, The Way It Works: Inside Ottawa (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2006) at 256 and 270.Google Scholar

³⁴ “Bruges Declaration on the Use of Force” (2 September 2003) 71(2) Annuaire de l’Institut de Droit International 279–80 (English and French texts of the resolution at 284–89). The Bruges Declaration was adopted by a vote of ninety to fifteen, with twelve abstentions. The institute at its biennial session held in Santiago, Chile, in 2007 had no difficulty in agreeing that today — “[g]enocide, crimes against humanity or large-scale war crimes should be considered as a threat to international peace and security” and to reaffirm the full legal authority of the “competent organs of the United Nations.” Resolution on the Present Problems of the Use of Armed Force in International Law, (2008) 72 Annuaire de l’Institut de Droit International.