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The role of 'international' law

In regard to yesterday's Page One article "Sisters stuck in diplomatic limbo": The Preamble of the U.N. Charter says, in part: "We the Peoples of the United Nations Determined ... to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the person, in the equal rights of men and women."

It seems to me that when the Islamic countries, with their religion-based doctrine that a child's father has primary custody from age 7, voluntarily adhere to the United Nations, its charter supersedes any domestic law that conflicts with it.

Article VI of the U.S. Constitution says, in part: "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall bemadeinPursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land."

The United States joined the United Nations by treaty, duly ratified by the Senate as the Constitution requires.

If international law can force reluctant sovereign nations to forgo "weapons of mass destruction" can't it also resolve once and for all -- with enforcing "teeth" -- whether women are to be legally inferior?

ROGER D. LEONARD

Bowie, Md.