International Law and Iraqi Courts

Abstract

A decade after the restoration of Iraq's sovereignty following the 2003 invasion, Iraq's authorities remain at best equivocal and at worst somewhat hostile to the notion that Iraq's domestic courts play a role in ensuring that Iraq abide by its international legal commitments, in particular as concerns the matters of human rights and criminal law that attract much scholarly attention.

The purpose of this book chapter is to explain how this came to be, and in particular how the ratification of the 2005 Constitution all but foreclosed the possibility that domestic Iraqi courts would rely extensively on international treaties in the area of human rights and criminal law, even when legally obligated to do so.

Keywords: Iraqi courts, human rights in Iraq, international law in Iraq, international law, human rights law