[churchillbuff]

Iraq now joins three other states with constitutions that provide for sharia experts who are not required to have civil law education on their Supreme Courts: Iran, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan. "These are not the models that new democracies should be emulating," said Ms. Windsor.

[Paul C. Jesup]

Iraq now joins three other states with constitutions that provide for sharia experts who are not required to have civil law education on their Supreme Courts

Are you saying that lawyers should be the only ones with the right to interpret a Constitution and by extention the law itself?

It is that sort of thinking that has created so many legal problems in the U.S.

[goldstategop]

Saudia Arabia and Iran are not democracies. Iraq and Afghanistan apply the Sharia in certain circumstances. True, their constitutions don't go as far as we Americans would like but compared to what they had before its a quantum leap forward. The critics don't fully appreciate that freedom expands in stages and to be entirely fair to the Iraqis and the Afghans, the United States wasn't exactly a model of modern democracy either in 1776.

(Denny Crane: "I like nature. Don't talk to me about the environment.")