The present incumbent, Derry Irvine, has been prompt in calling on them to scrutinise panels, in order to ensure that such a perceived conflict of interest does not arise again.It is quite extraordinary that they needed to be told this. Now that the European Convention on Human Rights has been incorporated into British law, the Law Lords have an enlarged role thrust upon them for which they seem wholly unprepared.Currently, this elect 12 inhabit one of the dustier corners of the British constitution. They decreed - by a margin of one vote (Lord Hoffmann's) - to remake the law as they thought it should be.The Supreme Court in America works in this way, as do continental systems: judge-made law there, rather than the application of precedent does, however, demand that those who sit in high judgment must be beyond suspicion of bias. The panel did not apply existing law, as the High Court had done when it ruled early that the General did enjoy immunity. Without consistency and transparency, the law loses its authority. Democracies elevate themselves above dictatorships by observing sound procedure, even when it would be simpler to cut corners. Even before Hoffmann's lapse, the case had taken us into uncharted territory.

The 3-2 decision by the Law Lords to overturn the High Court's ruling that Pinochet did enjoy immunity from prosecution as a former head of state represented a major change in the way that judicial rulings are made. That instinct is wrong because it undermines the very values on which a civilised state is based. It is tempting to claim that the cause of bringing an evil man to account should be more important than the detail of whether a judge was, or could be seen to be, unduly influenced by his connections to Amnesty. The leave granted to appeal will further extend an already lengthy process.

Age, illness and the slowness with which the wheels of international justice turn are the best friends of tyrants facing retribution. I understand the dismay and frustration on the part of those who have argued that Pinochet must be punished for his crimes. FOR THE want of a horseshoe nail, the horse, the battle and the war were lost. For the want of a morsel of judgement on the part of Lord Hoffmann, the extradition to Spain of General Pinochet has been endangered. Not bad for white trash.Bill Kauffman is a contributing editor of 'Chronicles' and author of 'With Good Intentions? Reflections on the Myth of Progress in America' (Praeger).. For if he keeps the war engines humming long enough, not only will Bill Clinton avoid conviction by the Senate, but future Schlesingers will adjudge him one of the truly great presidents in American history.

Thus the bombs, the carnage, the limbs and faces torn from innocent people. Perhaps, in the dead of night, while avoiding Mrs Clinton - "I'm gonna read, honey; don't wait up for me" - he has been inflicting Schlesinger upon himself. The more blood they shed, the closer they get to the Pantheon.Now, we all know that Mr Clinton, when not groping zaftig interns, ruminates about his "place in history". The relative peaceniks - Van Buren, Pierce, Harding, Hoover - are dumped into the "below average" or "failure" categories. Schlesinger is the proud sponsor of those galling "rate the presidents" polls of historians. Oddly, those designated "great" or "near great" are usually the war presidents: Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman.

Much of this was bred out of Mr Clinton at Georgetown and Oxford and Yale, but his willingness to bomb a sovereign nation once his vote-counters had informed him that his goose was cooked is a classic white-trash reaction: when backed into a corner, bite, scratch, and gouge but never surrender.Arthur Schlesinger Jr, the superannuated Kennedy hagiographer and consummate Cold War liberal, was among those defending Mr Clinton against impeachment in those misty days before the Clinton Phase of our Hundred Years War against Iraq. Clinton's failure to utter the simple truth about his grand jury testimony - "I lied" - sealed his fate in the House, yet this ornery refusal to own up was wholly consistent with the white-trash character. (As a rural American with populist sympathies, I hasten to distinguish white trash - slatternly, dishonest, lubricious women and brutish men - from poor whites in general.)Yet white trash have a few admirable qualities: stubbornness, prickly pride, a lurking (and often correct) suspicion that those on top got there by foul means. Young Bill may have made good grades in school, but at the end of the day he remains a classic example of white trash, with his indiscriminate rutting and comical refusal ever to take responsibility when something goes wrong. His mother was a floozy and gambler, his stepfather an abusive drunk, his brother a cocaine-besotted buffoon. Class - and not oral sex - is the great unmentionable in American politics. It has framed the entire Clinton-Lewinsky affair; it even illuminates the embers of Baghdad.