[JURIST] The Law Lords [official website], the judicial panel of the UK House of Lords that is Britain's highest court, Wednesday dismissed [opinion text] appeals brought by anti-war protesters who argued [JURIST report] that under the Criminal Law Act 1967 they were allowed to break British law in an attempt to stop what they termed a "greater crime of aggression", i.e. the invasion of Iraq. The Lords ruled that the British government's violation of international peace could not be treated as a crime under British law that would allow the activists to argue necessity as a legal defense. In his judgment Lord Bingham of Cornhill [Wikipedia profile] noted that international law does not automatically create domestic crimes, writing,

[I]t is for those representing the people of the country in Parliament, not the executive and not the judges, to decide what conduct should be treated as lying so far outside the bounds of what is acceptable in our society as to attract criminal penalties.