International Law 

Things like this frankly frighten me to my democratic core:

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor extolled Wednesday the growing role of international law in U.S. courts, saying judges would be negligent if they disregarded its importance in a post-Sept. 11 world of heightened tensions.
...
Later this term, the Supreme Court will decide the constitutionality of executing juvenile killers. The case has attracted wide interest overseas, with many foreign nations filing briefs pointing to international human rights norms as a justification for outlawing the practice.

O'Connor, who is expected to be a pivotal vote, didn't mention the case but said recognizing international law could foster more civilized societies in the United States and abroad. "International law is a help in our search for a more peaceful world," she said.

So who's international law do we need to follow more closely Justice O'Connor? Maybe we should suppress more of our free speech rights like they do in Canada. There you can be arrested or fined for anything publicly said that maybe offensive to some group of people. Sure, they may be nice and friendly, but is that something we want to uphold? Yeah - let's just throw away the 1^st Amendment.

Maybe we should be more like Iran. Let's cut off the hands of pick pocketers. Next time we have an anti-trust case, we should look at German law. They have a very long tradition of non-competition laws... Coke has a huge monopoly in that country. Granted I'm not sure how many changed after they joined the EU... but let's look into all of those possibilities.

My point is this. Where do you draw the line? Which "international law" do you look at? What are our standards for acceptance? My personal view is that we accept none of them. Why you ask? Because I had no say in the making of those laws. The idea of democracy is that the people making the laws represent our views - the views of those they represent. They are supposed to do what we want them to. Every time we hold an election we're holding our law makers accountable for their decisions. But I had no say in how the laws of other countries were made. The people who made their laws aren't accountable to me. I don't want our laws, our society, decided by people whom I did not choose.