Professor Eugene Kontorovich has kindly sent along the following comments to my earlier post:I was happy to read the thoughtful discussion here of my Green Bag article. In that article, I took issue with proponents of using foreign law in constitutional interpretation who quote as originalist support for their position the Declaration of Independence’s reference to a “decent respect for...
I had the opportunity to speak to the Madras Bar Assocation today and while I was at the High Court I came upon this quote which I liked. It is from the first Indian Judge to ever sit on the Madras High Court, Sir Muthuswamy Aiyar (1878-1895):"The Court of Justice is a sacred temple, the judges presiding over it...
That is very helpful Peggy. I think you raise some interesting arguments regarding selective appeal to foreign opinion and provide a useful critique of Kontorovich.This underscores for me yet again what is most interesting in the debate about originalist appeals to reliance on foreign opinions in constitutional adjudication. It is that the internationalists have been quite successful in using this...
Prompted by Roger's post (and also by some edits to a comment about Justice Blackmun's "internationalism" that I have been working on), I took a look at Eugene Kontorovich's essay in Green Bag about misplaced reliance by jurisprudential internationalists on the phrase "Opinions of Mankind." (I am not sure the phrase has become "a staple of the internationalist argument" as...
As noted here at the Volokh Conspiracy, Eugene Kontorovich has an excellent essay in Green Bag on misusing language in the Declaration of Independence to support reliance on foreign opinion in constitutional adjudication. Kontorovich argues that the function of the internationalist appeal to the Declaration is to “show that this approach has the most ancient and noble pedigree, that the...
In a response to my earlier post on Ikenberry’s views on progressive versus conservative foreign policy thinking, an anonymous commenter wrote:I don't buy either Ikenberry's superficial presentation in this post, or the underlying superiority of the liberal order as defined as "commitment to multilateralism and rules-based relations," which again is simplistic in the extreme. Clinton wanted to build "liberal" order?...
If (1) Justice Breyer thinks reference to foreign law is appropriate to understand structural guarantees; and (2) Congress is constitutionally authorized to regulate the jurisdiction of federal courts; then (3) Justice Breyer should rely on foreign law to shed light on this structural power.If this syllogism is correct, then I suppose that if (1) a foreign constitution grants the legislature...
I teach international trade and my students have often struggled to understand Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage. They should visit Bangalore.The modern era of free trade is premised on Ricardo’s theory, which presumes that each country should specialize in the production of the goods and services in which it has a comparative advantage and then trade with other countries for...
John Ikenberry has a great post over at America Abroad entitled “Democratic Enlargement versus Liberal Order.” I think it neatly contrasts the world views of conservatives and liberal internationalists (and by “liberal” I don’t mean “left wing”). I'll write on this more in the coming days. For now, here’s a few excerpts from Ikenberry's post (but the...
On June 3, the United States issued its 2005 Trafficking in Persons Report and demoted from Tier 2 to Tier 3 some of our closest allies in the Gulf, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates. This opens these Gulf allies to U.S. sanctions if they do not improve their record in human trafficking.For a useful discussion of...
While on the train to Bangalore this morning I read an especially bad op-ed piece in the Hindu on what is wrong with the United States. Money quote:"After the invasion of Iraq, the collective punishment of Fallujah, the abuses of Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram, the reckless insistence on the right to pollute the planet and the systematic asset-stripping of...
Suzanne Nossel over at Democracy Arsenal has posted this excellent analysis about why the US House of Representatives' current move (voted out of the International Relations Committee Wednesday) to condition or withhold US dues to the UN will be counter-productive. It includes a lot of detail about the US dues crisis of the late 1990s and how then-US Ambassador to...
