The Invasion of Panama Was a Lawful Response to Tyranny

Abstract

What Professors Tom Farer and Ved Nanda do not seem to understand is the positive implication for the development of human rights resulting from the United States intervention in Panama. Their views are so conditioned by a statist conception of international law that they seem unable to see through the abstraction that we call the “state” to the reality of human beings struggling to achieve basic freedoms. I am not talking about the human rights of American “matrons domiciled in Panama,” as Professor Farer puts it, who were “rescued” in 19th-century expeditionary-force style. Rather, I am talking about the human rights of Panamanian citizens to be free from oppression by a gang of ruling thugs. My focus is on the basic civil liberties and fundamental freedoms of the people of Panama themselves.