[JURIST] Ed Morgan, a Canadian law professor at the University of Toronto, outlines a humanitarian legal case for military action against Iraq in Wednesday's National Post:

Over the past several decades international law has been let out a little at the waist, moving beyond the UN Charter's snug procedures and the impractical Security Council. South African jurist Richard Goldstone, the former Yugoslavia war crimes prosecutor who chaired the Independent International Commission on Kosovo in 2000, has stated that this is particularly the case where "a vulnerable people" are "threatened with catastrophe." The plight of the Kurds, Shiites, and Iraqi opposition could not be more aptly described.

This thread of thought has now been woven through the fabric of international law. Vietnam invaded Cambodia to effect an overthrow -- a regime change, if you will -- of the Pol Pot gang. Tanzania likewise sent its armed forces into Uganda to rid that country of the tyrannical Idi Amin. Syria, currently a Security Council member and not typically a model of humanitarian conduct, intervened massively in Lebanon's grueling civil war, while NATO, with political support from all of Europe and most of the Arab and Islamic world, bombed Serbia into submission to halt the persecution of Kosovar Albanians.

None of these brought Security Council condemnation, but rather have provided a model for others to emulate.... Looking at the plight of the Iraqis under Saddam Hussein, one cannot help but think that humanitarian intervention is the right doctrinal fit. President Bush should at least try the argument on for size.