Rule of Law?

I understand that defining the space for "former" Baathists in Iraq is a delicate question. The Iraqi government has every right to ban hard core Baathists from running for office given the risk that these jokers might try to carry out a coup one day. And it is understandable that the banned individuals, who might have been party members in name only (membership had its privileges, to be sure, but no blood would be directly on their hands), would want a court to weigh the issues and rule on the legality of their ban.

On the surface, this seems like a triumph of rule of law:

An Iraqi appeals court Wednesday suspended a ban imposed on hundreds of candidates for suspected ties to Saddam Hussein's regime, allowing them to run in next month's election, an official said. ...

Washington also worries about any disputes that could challenge the credibility of March 7 parliamentary elections and last month sent Vice President Joe Biden on a mission to try to ease the pre-election tensions.

The fact that we sent people to pressure Iraq is worrisome, however, and this doesn't bode well for rule of law:

Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, sought a compromise strategy by shifting the issue to the nation's highest appeals court, which then came up with a compromise of its own: the candidates could run, but would not be allowed to take office until their links to the former regime had been fully examined.

"Compromise" is part of politics and should not play much of a role in interpreting the law. If we truly pressured the Iraqi government to subvert their still-forming rule of law because we think we know what is best, we are doing Iraq no favors. Once they get the idea that rule of law can be discarded for a good reason (assuming we are right and not the elections commission that banned the candidates), it will be easy to set it aside for bad reasons, too.

UPDATE: The Iraqi government doesn't think the ruling is legal:

"Postponing implementing the law of the Justice and Accountability Commission till after the election is illegal and not constitutional," government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in a statement on his website.

At least some Iraqis are noticing that the ruling is similar to what Vice President Biden said he wanted, and that this means we influenced their interpretation of their own laws.

We're supposed to helping entrench rule of law in Iraq--not undermine it.