Starting June 1, yet another rapporteur from the United Nations Human Rights Commission will be investigating America, looking into allegations of official violence against women.  She follows one colleague scrutinizing "religious persecution" here, and another who recently wrote a report highly critical of the death penalty in the United States.  This situation is ironic, at best, since the rapporteurs questioning us would find more useful work to do in numerous other U.N.  member states.  Although it may be too late to prevent this latest U.N.  investigation from proceeding, we should, nonetheles s, certainly emphasize the manifest deficiencies of its "report card" on the death penalty.

The death-penalty rapporteur was way out of line to investigate the United States.  His U.N.  mandate, by its terms, covers only "extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions." Can anyone recall the last time any level of American government carried out an execution in such a lawless manner?  One may argue (if incorrectly) that the death penalty falls disproportionately on one group or another, but there is simply no credible argument that the administration of the death penalty in America is "extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary."

Indeed, the rapporteur himself gives his real agenda away when he says in his report: "Information concerning the extension of the scope and the reintroduction of death penalty statutes in several states" partly prompted his visit.  This admission reflects unambiguously the pursuit of a political agenda by an agent of an undisciplined international organizati on.  There are "extrajudicial executions" in the world, and the United Nations' inability to focus its scarce resources where the real problems exist is telling evidence for many Americans of fundamental structural flaws in the institution itself. Further evidence of these flaws may be found in the rapporteur's unbelievable recommendation that our government "include a human rights component in training programs for members of the judiciary." Someone, I trust, is swiftly bringing this recommendation to the attention of Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

While one unguided rapporteur (or even several) is hardly a threat to the Republic, there can be no argument that something else more troubling is at work here.  Once again, listen to the rapporteur: "The United Nations has gradually shifted from the position of a neutral observer . . . to a position favouring the eventual abolition of the death penalty." (Emphasis added.) Most Americans will wonder how the U.N.  arrived at such a position, so fundamentally different from the clearly expressed democratic choice of the United States, without our
knowing about it.  While it may be difficult for some to get excited about this incident, the rapporteur wrote a 40-page, single-spaced, heavily-footnoted report about his "mission" to the United States; was this effort solely for his personal edification, with no thought whatever to its larger potential impact?

The real question here is how and when the United Nations ever came to believe it had authority to make such judgments in the first place? Whether abolition of the death penalty is the personal opinion of some rapporteur from Senegal is, of course, utterly irrelevant to our own domestic debate on the issue.  Being lectured by U.N.  nabobs will only interest those already persuaded.

But the rapporteur and his allies are trying to do something more: leverage the stature and legal authority of the U.N.  (such as they are) into our domestic debate, and that is what makes it illegitimate.  For example, the
rapporteur recommends, in light of his findings that "the Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers" make a visit to the United States.  He also recommends that our police receive "training on international standards on law enforcement and human rights." Why?

We should understand clearly that to whatever extent the rapporteur's work has an impact, it represents a shift away from a constitution-based decision-making structure toward one that subjects us to the vagaries of world
opinion.  Ironically, the rapporteur has picked his target accurately.  It is precisely because the United States is not simply one among 185 members of the United Nations that our debate on the death penalty, as on so many other "domestic" policy issues, makes us the focus of so much effort to bind our policies through international constraints. And every time the United States bends its knee to this kind of international pressure, it sets a significant - and detrimental - precedent.

Remaining insensitive to legitimate concerns about this incident is ultimately self-defeating, because those who ignore the rapporteur's work will only contribute to the growing cynicism about the United Nations. When an employee or agency of the U.N.  does something destructive, or even silly, U.N. supporters, of all people, should say so.  Otherwise, it should come as no surprise to them that, over time, U.S.  voters turn away from the United Nations, Congress declines to appropriate assessments, and the impulse to American unilateralism increases.  Our latest visitor from the United Nations should bear this in mind.

John Bolton is the senior vice president of the American Enterprise Institute.  In the Bush administration, he was assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs.