Thanks for an excellent post. What I find particularly interesting about the reaction to the Honduran crisis is that foreign States and international institutions are presuming to pronounce on the domestic constitutional law of Honduras. Not only are foreign States and the international institutions saying that the ouster of Zelaya is illegitimate/unlawful under some international standard they are saying that it is an unconstitutional change of government. But this claim is contrary to the decision of the Honduras judicial institutions that have the authority to interpret the Honduras constitution.

So, the question then is whether foreign States and international bodies are obliged to defer to domestic pronouncements as to what the domestic law is? There is actually quite a lot of practice of domestic courts of one state saying that they cannot presume to test the legality of acts of foreign governments against the law of that foreign State. In other words, they apply a rule consistent (perhaps even motivated by) the principle of non-intervention and say it is up to the domestic authorities to determine domestic law. In the Honduran case we seem to see a different practice that says foreign bodies can presume to authoritatively determine what domestic law says. In some ways this is different from previous (I mean traditional pre- 1990s) practice regarding non-recognition of govts as the previous practice regarding non-recognition does not take as it starting point a violation of domestic law.

However, the question that I have is whether the new practice of pronouncing on domestic law as a reason for non-intervention is more of a derogation from the non-intervention principle than the traditional non-recognition practice.