Tony Blair, Doctrine of the international community and Sedgefield speech (and responses by teachers of international law), 1999, 2003–4

By the time the UK Prime Minister Tony Blair delivered this speech in his parliamentary constituency of Sedgefield, Operation Iraqi Freedom had been ongoing for nearly a year and its legality had provoked major debate. On 15 February 2003, one million protesters in the UK challenged the military intervention invoking the language of international law, and on 7 March 2003, The Guardian newspaper published a letter co-signed by a number of very prominent academics specialising in international law which also expressed scepticism regarding the proposed military campaign. A senior legal adviser in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office left her job, stating that she could not agree with the decision to go to war "in circumstances which are so detrimental to the international order and the rule of law". Attorney General Goldsmith had given legal advice which intricately pieced together the UK Government's argument that Saddam Hussein's regime had been and remained in material breach of key UN Security Council Resolutions regarding the prohibition of ownership or development of weapons of mass destruction and thereby rendered itself vulnerable to the use of military force. By the time the Prime Minister made the Sedgefield address, it had become a matter of significant
controversy that no weapons of mass destruction ("WMD") had been located.