U.S. is not in violation of its treaty obligations because it says it isn’t. Since it has made it known from the moment it ratified the treaty what it considered its obligations to be, it has behaved absolutely appropriately under the terms of the treat. Further, treaties are only functional as the signatories agree, if the United States interprets the treaty differently than the other signatories that makes the treaty itself invalid as they only are valid when there is mutual agreement.
Congress has no legal obligation to enact executing legislation for a non self-executing treaty. Our political system is an open book, just as two CEOs can negotiate an agreement that gets rejected by the board, so entities that negotiate with us should be aware of what can happen with an agreed upon treaty. Considering many other countries have such issues, this is just a common part of the international system. It is thus dishonest to present it as out of the norm, and in fact it must be considered the norm and the assumption should be all international actors are aware of treaties that may conflict with domestic law.
Treaties are not law, it is up to the parties to negotiate what to do when these situations arise, as happened in the case of Mexican nationals. Mexico wanted us to do one thing, we did another. End of story. Since there is no legal arbiter we were within our rights as were they.
I was obviously not talking about you in the same way that you were obviously not asserting that I was “Effete European leftist…” engaging in “reflexive masturbatory pseudo outrage.”
Because that would be abuse and hence against the rules!
The UK chose to negotiate an end to that conflict. That was its choice. Our choice is just as valid, as is the choice of Israel to prosecute many Nazis for decades after the Holocaust.
Ponsonby Rule as a point of fact some legislative approval of treaties is common in many countries. Treaty ratification wiki article also contains other examples.
“Officially the change of partners had never happened. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.”
There is a reason some treaties are self-executing. If you negotiate one that isn’t with the United States then it’s tacit acceptance that just because the Senate ratifies it, doesn’t mean the full Congress will enact executing legislation.
Many countries have a dual division of ratification and enacting legislation. Many countries also have domestic laws which are held as sacrosanct and can and do overrule treaty obligations. Thus, the United States is about on par. There’s tons of examples of this, but the German art one is instructive because it is topical and easy to understand.
Germany has a legal obligation under treaties to restore art to its rightful owners when that art was seized during the Nazi regime. However, public museums ran by the Federal states often hold art that has never been checked for provenance even when Jewish groups insist these museums most likely contain Nazi stolen art. Under the laws of Germany the Federal government is limited in what it can do, and is thus not able to fully comply with its treaty obligations.
This is actually different from the Consular Rights case in the United States. Texas law didn’t trump a treaty in that case. Instead, a treaty signed in the 60s was never properly enabled by Federal enacting legislation, which was the responsibility of the Federal Congress. This left the Supreme Court no option but to say that there is no conflict with Federal law to let Texas proceed with the execution, and no conflict with the treaty because it was not self-enacting.
If Congress had appropriately passed its enacting legislation, said legislation would be valid based on the treaty, and would trump Texas law and the 4-5 Mexican nationals who have been executed since this became an issue would have had legal redress.
So there the failure to live up to the treaty is on the Congress, not Texas, which isn’t intrinsically associated with the treaty. In a way we are different from Germany in that if we had a similar art law that was enacted Federally, Texas museums could be compelled by Federal authorities to investigate their holdings.
We have not negotiated any normalization of relations with Iran. If as part of that we were asked to no longer consider persons involved in the hostage crisis to be terrorists/criminals I’d be fine with that. But in exchange for a whole lot of nothing I see no reason to change our stance. The UK got peace with the IRA and largely an end to the Irish troubles for its actions.
I agree. But businesses are subordinate to national law, which can be enforced vigorously. Countries are not subordinate to any law other than the law of realpolitik. This is reality and all countries recognize this.
What is your view of Putin invading Crimea. Is he now to be considered untrustworthy and devious because he ignored his country’s Treaty obligations to respect Ukrainian Crimean sovereignty. Or was he acting totally morally, rationally and responsibly in the international arena?
Respectfully, you might want to be careful before accusing me of needing to show “maturity” since most of your posts in this thread don’t strike me as being terribly mature.
No, Putin should have been considered untrustworthy for years prior to that. But all national leaders should be regarded with extreme skepticism by other leaders and by citizens too for that matter.
Morally - Maybe, maybe not. Lots of ways to slice that one.
Rationally - I’d argue no, but I regard Crimea as potentially a strategic misstep because it only makes sense for propaganda purposes. It’s actually going to be an economic drain on Russia as long as it’s part of Russia (which is likely to be for a long time.) It makes some rational sense for Putin to try and block Ukraine’s closer ties with the EU and NATO but the Crimea move didn’t need to be part of that and isn’t even logically advancing those aims but countering them.