The Artful Jurist

Has anyone else been wondering about the sofa-sized sculpture of a shoe, a work of art that was created in Iraq to commemorate the shoe-throwing journalist who chucked his footware at President Bush? I don't mean I'm wondering about the subject matter of the art. Public art can—and often does—take on controversial topics.

No, my question has to do with the sudden removal of the shoe sculpture. It had been up maybe only a day before local authorities ordered it removed from its site in front of an orphanage in Tikrit, Sadam Hussein's hometown. And down it came.

Now I know they do things differently in other nations—especially since other nations don't have the First Amendment to lean on. But is there anything in the laws of the new, democratized Iraq that protects free speech whether printed, verbal or visual? If there is, I'm just waiting for the lawsuit to be filed on this one.