Recent Posts

02 Aug

Opinio Juris Symposium: The Textualist Case for Congressional Control Over Responses to Military Attacks

One of my major purposes in discussing Professor Ramsey’s treatment of the scope of the president’s power to respond to attacks was to suggest that here, on this topic, his book may not meet its goal of giving dispositive interpretive weight to the written constitutional text as understood by Americans at the time of ratification. To the extent, then,...

Andrew Kent | 0 Comments

02 Aug

Opinio Juris Symposium: Original Meaning Comes Up Short in Foreign Relations Law

I’ll join the chorus praising Michael Ramsey’s work, both the book The Constitution’s Text in Foreign Affairs and his scholarship over the course of more than a decade. Mike’s is an important and distinctive voice in the foreign relations law community. It is refreshingly agenda-free. As Martin Flaherty points out, his conclusions don’t line up neatly...

Peter Spiro | 0 Comments

02 Aug

Justice Alito Teaches the War Powers Clause

While we are on the subject of Michael Ramsey's book, I thought I would note that Justice Samuel Alito is currently teaching at Pepperdine Law School a two-week seminar from July 30 to August 10 on the War Powers Clause. The public announcement about the course is available here. According to the announcement, "Justice Alito indicated that the...

Roger Alford | 0 Comments

02 Aug

Opinio Juris Symposium: Are Non-Self-Executing Treaties Unconstitutional?

I would like to push the conversation about Mike Ramsey’s new book to a slightly different topic. What does the Constitution’s text tell us about the status of treaties in the domestic U.S. legal system? As many of our readers know, Article VI of the U.S. Constitution makes treaties the “supreme law of the land,” but conventional wisdom...

Julian Ku | 7 Comments

01 Aug

Opinio Juris Symposium: Can President Obama Attack Pakistan?

I have some more detailed thoughts on the postings by Professors Kent, Flaherty, and Ramsey but I did want to note one news item today that is actually relevant to the discussion between Professors Ramsey and Kent about the President's ability to use military force to respond to attacks. In a major national security address, presidential candidate Barack Obama called...

Julian Ku | 4 Comments

01 Aug

Opinio Juris Symposium: A Clarification on the President’s Power to Respond to Attacks

Professor Lederman asks in a comment to Professor Kent’s post if we could clarify our disagreement on the President's power to respond to attacks. Briefly, here is how I understand it. I think both of us agree: (1) That Congress has the ultimate control over the U.S. response to an attack, in that it can limit the response by...

Michael Ramsey | 5 Comments

01 Aug

Opinio Juris Symposium: Thoughts in Response to Professors Flaherty and Kent

Thanks to Professors Flaherty and Kent for their insightful comments. Both of them have done great prior work in illuminating the Constitution’s historical understanding, and I continue to learn from them. Professor Flaherty’s cautions about history’s ambiguities must always be kept in mind in attempting a project like this. I’ve tried to be clear in the book that I...

Michael Ramsey | 2 Comments

01 Aug

Opinio Juris Symposium: Can History Determine Textual Meaning?

[We are pleased to have Martin S. Flaherty as a second participant in the discussion today. Professor Flaherty is the Leitner Family Professor of International Law at Fordham Law School and a Visiting Professor at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public & International Affairs at Princeton University. A widely published scholar in the fields of constitutional law and...

Martin Flaherty | 0 Comments

01 Aug

Opinio Juris Symposium: The President’s Residual Power to Use Military Force

[We are very pleased to have Andrew Kent's participation in this online symposium on The Constitution's Text in Foreign Affairs. J. Andrew Kent is an associate professor of law at Fordham University School of Law. Although he is new to the academy, Professor Kent has already published important works in the area of foreign relations law including "A...

Andrew Kent | 1 Comment

01 Aug

Opinio Juris Symposium: Introducing “The Constitution’s Text in Foreign Affairs”

[Michael Ramsey is a Professor of Law at the University of San Diego. He will be posting today and tomorrow on his new book: The Constitution's Text in Foreign Affairs. Please stay tuned for his posts, as well as for comments by our other symposium participants.] Thanks to Opinio Juris for organizing this symposium and inviting me to participate....

Julian Ku | 2 Comments

01 Aug

Opinio Juris Symposium: “The Constitution’s Text in Foreign Affairs”

Opinio Juris is proud to host an online symposium on Michael Ramsey’s new book The Constitution’s Text in Foreign Affairs recently published by Harvard University Press. We are especially pleased to have Professor Ramsey with us to discuss his book because it is, in my humble opinion, the most important monograph on U.S. foreign relations law in the...

Julian Ku | 0 Comments

01 Aug

Local Citizenship, No Matter Your Immigration Status

Here's a smart idea out of New Haven: issuing ID cards to city residents regardless of immigration status. According to this report, some 10-12,000 undocumented aliens living in New Haven are eligible for the card, which will allow immigrants to fill prescriptions and access local banks, libraries, and public services. "Most importantly, it will designate them as full-fledged participants...

Peter Spiro | 5 Comments