[LINK] Maurer on Honduras

[rfmcdonald]

In two follow-up posts, Noel Maurer considers (1, 2) continues to consider the question of the coup's legality, and seems to have come to the conclusion that it was legal.

[T]he Supreme Court has the power to remove officials from office when it determines that they have broken the law. President Zelaya pretty clearly broke the law when he refused to obey an order from the Supreme Court to call off the referendum, and as I pointed out earlier, the Honduran constitution clearly (if stupidly) bans any consultatory referenda touching on presidential term limits.

So my new version is: Zelaya broke the law, the Supreme Court called him on it, and the military took the initiative in enforcing the Court's order. (Maybe too much initiative.) That interpretation will depend on how closely the armed forces and the Supreme Court cooperated in the ouster. (The more it looks like the Court got the ball rolling, the more legal the coup will seem.) Given the legal fog, the Obama Administration seems to be taking a pitch-perfect tone here.