Judges.

One of the reasons we need to be careful about our Judges and why we need to demand strict constructionists for our courts is the recent furor over the Supreme Court citing international law for judgements. The WSJ gives us a good look at what courts like this do: (subscription required for link)

Justice' for Terrorists May 18, 2005

"Abdullah Ocalan isn't exactly a household name in America. But he's more notorious even than Osama bin Laden in Turkey, where his Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) waged a terrorist and guerrilla war that cost an estimated 37,000 lives. Last week, incredibly, the European Court of Human Rights ordered that he be given a new trial.
For Americans, this verdict should serve as yet another warning about the dangers of joining permanent multilateral legal institutions such as the International Criminal Court. ICC backers claim that the court can be trusted to exercise its authority with prudence and discretion. But the Ocalan verdict is only the latest example of the European court's frequent overreaching.
It has ruled, for example, that British law permitting the spanking of children somehow violates the European Convention on Human Rights' prohibition against "torture" and "degrading treatment." Obviously the Convention -- drafted in the aftermath of World War II -- was intended to limit the systematic abuses of governments, not the disciplinary discretion of parents. But the tendency of judges over time is to amass whatever power they can get away with, a danger all the more pronounced in any legal system not directly accountable to national governments.
Here's a quick history of the Ocalan case: For years, he received sympathetic treatment from Europe -- especially Greece, Belgium and France, where the wife of the late President Mitterrand was a fan. Ocalan was expelled from Syria in response to the credible threat of Turkish military force in 1998 (no "land for peace" nonsense here). Within a month he was captured in Italy, which actually considered granting the mass-murderer political asylum because Turkey had a death penalty. If any other European countries wanted to help put Ocalan behind bars, they didn't show it.
In January 1999 Ocalan was shipped out of Italy on a private jet. "I don't know where Ocalan is, and I don't care," remarked Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema. A month later, with help from American intelligence, the Turks captured Ocalan hiding in the Greek Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. Not content to leave it there, Europe's political class began pleading for Ocalan's life. And Turkey, desperate not to offend during its EU membership drive, duly commuted the death sentence Ocalan received. This verdict is Turkey's reward.
The ruling by the European Court of Human Rights has three main due process objections to the Ocalan trial: a military judge was present for part of the proceedings; Ocalan didn't get quite as much access to his lawyers as he wanted; and there was a delay in bringing him before a judge after his capture (as if he had no clue what the charges might be). These are essentially frivolous reasons for ordering retrial, since no serious person could imagine the possibility of a different result.
After reading the verdict, David Rivkin, an international lawyer who has argued before the Yugoslavia war crimes tribunal, rendered the following judgment to us: "political, and despicable in its arrogance and hypocrisy." And Europe wonders why the U.S. doesn't always take its opinions about the war on terrorism seriously."

H/T to Richard