Lord Bingham of Cornhill, who has just stepped down as senior law lord, cited the US-led invasion of Iraq, its "redefinition" of torture and the detention conditions of suspects in Guantanamo Bay.
"Particularly disturbing to proponents of the rule of law is the cynical lack of concern for international legality among some top officials in the Bush administration," he said in a lecture to mark the 50th anniversary of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law.
It was not clear, he added, what, if any, legal justification the US Government relied on for its invasion of Iraq, although prominent figures had made clear their ambition to remove Saddam Hussein
He was also scathing about the legal advice of the former Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, on Britain's invasion of Iraq which was "flawed" in stating that a second UN Security Council resolution was not needed.
If that was right, the invasion was a "serious violation of international law and of the rule of law," he said.
"The moment that a state treats the rulers of international law as binding on others but not on itself, the compact on which the law rests is broken."
Lord Goldsmith had however been consistent in saying that regime change was not a justification, Lord Bingham said.
But he added that the record of the British as an occupying power in Iraq had been "sullied by a number of incidents, most notably the shameful beating to death of Mr Baha Mousa in Basra".
However, he said: "But such breaches of the law were not as a result of deliberate government policy and the rights of the victims have been recognised."
"This contrasts with the unilteral decisions of the US Government that the Geneva Convention did not apply to the detention conditions in Guantanamo Bay, Cubna; or to trial of al-Qaida or Taliban prisoners by military commissions, or that al-Qaida suspects should be denied the rights of both prisoners of war and crimiman spects and that torture should be redefined, contrary to the Torture Convention."
Lord Bingham said that recent events highlighted two serious deficiencies with the rule of law in the international sphere.
The first was "the willingnesss of some states in some circumstances to rewrite the rules to meet the perceived exigencies of the political situation," he said. The UK did this in the Suez crisis of 1956.
The second was that only 65 of 192 member states of the United Nations had signed up to the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice.
"It is a lamentable fact that, of the five permanent members of the Security Council, only one, the United Kingdom, now does so, Russia and China never having done so and France and the United States having withdrawn earlier acceptances."
That step had to be taken if the rule of law was to become truly effective, he said. Meanwhile, he predicted that states "chastened by their experience in Iraq" would be unlikely to repeat it.
Even though not hauled before any international court, they had been "arraigned at the bar of world opinon and judged unfavourably, with resulting damage to their standing and influence". link
A former law lord, Lord Bingham, has claimed that the legal advice on which Britain went to war in Iraq in 2003 was "flawed in two fundamental respects".
In a speech to a legal institute, Lord Bingham said the advice, given to the Government by the then Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, did not provide any evidence that Iraq was in breach of UN resolutions, and failed to make clear that only the UN Security Council could authorise action against the middle-eastern state.
Lord Bingham concluded that the Iraq invasion was therefore "a serious violation of international law". Responding to his criticism, Lord Goldsmith said that the invasion was legal, adding: "I would not have given that advice if it were not genuinely my view."
The Liberal Democrats said Lord Bingham's remarks made a full public inquiry into the invasion of Iraq "inevitable". link
No 10 will appeal information request
Number 10 has no intention of giving up the Cabinet minutes on the Iraq war without a fight, in the face of the surprise ruling in Tuesday by the Information Commissioner Richard Thomas.
Gordon Brown feels he has nothing to hide - he was only an acquiescent player in the war - but his team have no intention of allowing the precedent to be created whereby the meetings of the Cabinet are fair game for another Freedom of Information request.
They are planning to appeal the decision, then worry about what to do later if the Information Commissioner holds firm and stands by his decision. Such a conflict with the Government would be as unprecedented as the release of the Cabinet minutes.
Clare Short kept a diary during the period covered by the FOI request, March 7-17 2003, and there were two Cabinet meetings during that period - the regular Thursday Cabinet on March 13 and the Special Cabinet to discuss the Attorney-General Lord Goldsmith's legal advice that the war was legal.
Short says that the official Cabinet minutes are 'sanitised' and will not reveal anything new. However, the Cabinet Secretary keeps his own account of the proceedings of the Cabinet and that is a much fuller report.
If the FOI ruling forces Downing Street to reveal the Cabinet minutes, stand by for a second request for the Cabinet Secretary's note of the same meetings.
In his ruling, the Information Commissioner said disclosure of the Cabinet minutes was needed to "allow the public to more fully understand this particular decision of the Cabinet".
The person who had made the original FOI request said that not releasing the information created "a public impression that something not entirely truthful has been uttered." link
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