Okay, before I start I know that “anybody can sue anybody else for anything”. I’m asking if it is possible enough to not be dismissed out of hand.
Here goes: If I read this thread correctly, the US ratified and signed a treaty to participate in the UN. According to Article VI of the US Constitution, any treaties signed become, along with acts of Congress and the Constitution itself, the supreme law of the land. Now, I haven’t read the entire UN Charter, but if it says in there that member states are to pay dues, then could I sue the federal government and force it to pay the back dues? Furthermore, could I sue to force it to comply with with Security Council resolutions (or lack thereof)?
No. As an individual citizen protesting a governmental action, you lack “standing,” the particularized injury that gives you a distinct legal claim. Since nonpayment of the United States’ dues affects you just the same as it affects every other citizen, your remedy is exclusively through the political process–that is, you can elect legislators and presidential electors who are sympathetic to your views and will appropriate money for paying the dues.
No, a senator cannot sue, any more than any other citizen can. (It has been tried, both by individual members of Congress, and by groups of them. The courts have routinely dismissed disputes between legislators in their legislative capacities and the executive branch as “political questions” beyond judicial reach.) But a senator can introduce and vote for an appropriation that will pay the dues.
I have read in some (probably far left-wing) literature that the US never actually signed up to the entirety of the UN charter and never thus considered themselves held by its policies or rulings. I know the US have dismissed the juristriction of the ICC and the World Court on occasion (when it suited them). and thought this may be another step they had not undertaken to leave them free to act in their own interest when necessary and not merely tied to the will of the UN. No cite, just a fuzzy memory.
While it is untrue that “the US never actually signed up to the entirety of the UN charter,” ratifying the Charter itself subjected the United States to practically no obligation that it does not voluntarily assume. As a permanent member of the Security Council, the United States can veto any resolution that the Security Council considers, and has exercised its veto on numerous occasions over the years.
The International Court of Justice, commonly known as the “World Court,” is likewise an essentially voluntary arrangement. The Court is “open” to the nations that have ratified the Statute of the International Court of Justice, and to other nations under certain conditions, but a nation cannot be hauled into court and subject to its judgment without the nation’s consent:
The United States has refrained from submitting itself to the Court’s compulsory jurisdiction.
And the United Nations Charter (unlike, for example, the Constitution of the United States) contains no “supremacy clause” under which the United Nations can enact positive legislation that binds the member nations. When the United Nations is interested in getting the international community onto the same page on some given topic, it typically drafts an international convention or a treaty, which it then submits to the member nations for their ratification. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court is one such treaty and, as you mentioned, the United States has not ratified the Statute. The United States has ratified many less controversial treaties and conventions that the United Nations has proposed, though.
Good question. Probably not, although I have never heard of a case where an international organization invoked a domestic court’s jurisdiction in order to enforce a nation’s international obligation, so there is no precedent that I can point to.
I expect that a federal court would dismiss such a case under the “political question” doctrine, since the Constitution commits the conduct of foreign relations to the executive and legislative branches, and a dispute between an international organization and the federal government is a matter beyond judicial reach (although article III does say that “the judicial power shall extend to all cases . . . arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority” and “to controversies to which the United States shall be a party”). The United States could also invoke its sovereign immunity against such a suit.
The United Nations probably would not resort to domestic litigation, however, because the Charter provides a remedy for a member nation’s nonpayment of dues:
That remedy may be the exclusive remedy to which the United Nations is entitled, so that it cannot assert a claim for dues in a member nation’s courts.
Well, sort of, but not really. Each country is obligated to pay a certain percentage of the costs of running the UN, and those percentages are roughly based on percentage of world GDP.
In the 1990s, the United States paid 25% of UN costs. in 1999-2000. our ambassador to the UN renegotiated these dues under an agreement with essentially three parts: 1) the American assessments drop from 25% to 22%; 2) the UN cleans up its bureaucracy; and 3) the US gets caught up on its dues.
it would be erroneous to believe, for example, that Syria, Libya, or France could somehow stick the US with some huge, surprise bill that we’d have to pay by ourselves.
It should be noted that $2.2 billion of this total was voluntary contributions to programs like UNICEF, the UN Development Programme, and the World Food Program.
I’m a little confused. As I’m reading the replies to the OP, it sounds as though the federal gov’t. cannot actually be held to treaties by the people, even though those treaties are constitutionally some of the supreme laws of the land. Or is it, we can hold the gov’t. to it, but only through the ballot box? And why is, oh let’s say, passing Shinto as the official religion of the land an act that could be taken to court–it affects us all equally–for breaking the law as laid out by the constitution, whereas violating a treaty cannot?
I’m not trying to be difficult. I’m really not sure I understand. Thanks so much for your help so far!
This stuff does get complex and slippery, particularly around legal abstractions like “standing” and evolving concepts like the “political question” doctrine. Hence the many lawsuits that have carved out the basic contours: if the subject were simple, then it probably would not reach the Supreme Court nearly as often as it has.
js_africanus, your summary–“we can hold the gov’t. to it, but only through the ballot box”–is essentialy accurate, with respect to treaties that involve foreign affairs or national or international policy (what the philosopher John Locke called the sovereign’s “federative” capacity). But a treaty that confers personal rights is a different story, and can be enforced through private litigation. For example, if the UN Charter contained a clause saying that a member nation must refund to any taxpayer upon demand that part of his or her taxes attributable to dues paid by that nation to the United Nations, then that taxpayer could make a claim against the government for the refund (assuming that the treaty, or some domestic law receiving the treaty, conferred jurisdiction on a domestic court and waived the government’s sovereign immunity). That claim would involve a particularized injury distinct from that suffered by other taxpayers who had not demanded a refund.
A law establishing Shinto as the state religion would not “affect us all equally”: it would impose a lesser burden on (or would actually advantage) those citizens who already practice Shinto as their personal religion. A citizen who objects to state-sponsored Shinto therefore suffers a particularized injury distinct from that suffered by other citizens who do not object.