ABSTRACT
In May 1997, Jose Mauricio Bustani was appointed as the Director-General of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, an international organization located in The Hague and founded on the basis of the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention. In Bustani the International Labour Organization Administrative Tribunal simply takes a shortcut: it submits a highly political decision to the rule of law by stripping the political decision of its political elements and without saying that it does so, and that amounts in effect to constitutionalism in disguise. Viewed as a possible exercise in constitutionalism, perhaps the most interesting aspect of the Bustani case is how the Tribunal assumed jurisdiction. On the merits, Bustani argued that there were a lot of things wrong with the impugned decision. By subjecting the decision to oust Bustani to some form of legal scrutiny it can be seen as supportive of a constitutional approach, if not in name then at least in action.
