The Supreme Court will reconsider this fall whether the punishment is unconstitutionally cruel, continuing a recent pattern of placing itself at the center of international debates over American laws and practices.

The United States is among only a few countries that allow execution for crimes committed before age 18, and friend-of-the-court filings Monday said the practice leaves America diplomatically isolated and vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy on human rights issues.

''Countries whose human rights records are criticized by the United States have no incentive to improve their records when the United States fails to meet the most fundamental, baseline standards,'' said a filing on behalf of Nobel laureates, including former President Carter and former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

The 25-nation European Union and 23 other countries argued that executing juvenile killers ''violates widely accepted human rights norms and the minimum standards of human rights set forth by the United Nations.''

Mexico noted separately that three of the 73 current death row inmates condemned for killings that occurred before they were 18 are Mexican nationals.

Diplomats including former undersecretary of state Thomas Pickering and former ambassador to France Felix Rohatyn argued there is a growing international consensus against such executions.

The United States executed more juvenile offenders than the rest of the world combined between 1990 and 2003, the diplomats' filing said.

In the past four years, only five nations have executed juveniles, the diplomats said: Congo, China, Iran, Pakistan and the United States.

''In no other area of human rights does the United States consider these nations to be our equals,'' the filing said.

Two Utah teenagers are charged with capital murder, but prosecutors said Monday they had not yet decided whether to pursue the death penalty.

Sean Graham and Jesse Simmons, both 17, are charged in Cedar City's 5th District Court with aggravated murder for the March beating death of youth-home counselor Anson Arnett.

The youths were residents of the Maximum Life Skills Academy when, on March 8, they struck Arnett, 31, in the head with a baseball bat and stole an academy van. Arnett died the next day.

Iron County Attorney Scott Garrett noted that the teens' preliminary hearing occurred only last month and that no trial date has been set.

"When we get a little bit closer to trial we may have more discussion [about the death penalty,]" Garrett told The Salt Lake Tribune. "Our first concern is getting a conviction at trial."

None of Utah's 10 death-row inmates committed their crimes as minors.

The death penalty is a sticking point between the United States and many of its allies, some of which will not extradite wanted killers who might face execution in the United States.

International views and the experience of other nations are increasingly important in Supreme Court cases, and friend-of-the-court filings that cite international law earned mention in some of the court's most prominent rulings over the past three terms. One such case is a parallel to the current death penalty issue. In 2002, the court noted national as well as international opposition in ruling that the death penalty cannot be applied to mentally retarded killers.

That ruling and the general trend of internationalism is rued by the court's most vocal conservative, Justice Antonin Scalia. In a dissent in the mental retardation case, Scalia wrote that international ''notions of justice are [thankfully] not always those of our people.''

The American Medical Association, the nation's largest organization of doctors, as well as other medical and mental health groups also told the court they oppose execution of teen killers.