I have no idea how this is supposed to be analogous. Surely, you are not comparing the World Court–the body tasked with interpreting and applying international law–to a prosecutor?
Simplicity itself. I give you Goldwater v. Carter, 444 U.S. 996 (1979), a rather fractured series of opinions resulting in the dismissal of a lawsuit seeking to force President Carter to abide by the U.S. treaty with Taiwan. See alsoFoster v. Neilson, 27 U.S. 253, 309 (1829) (Marshall, C.J.) (“If those departments which are entrusted with the foreign intercourse of the nation, which assert and maintain its interests against foreign powers, have unequivocally asserted its rights of dominion over a country of which it is in possession, and which it claims under a treaty; if the legislature has acted on the construction thus asserted, it is not in its own courts that this construction is to be denied. A question like this respecting the boundaries of nations, is, as has been truly said, more a political than a legal question; and in its discussion, the courts of every country must respect the pronounced will of the legislature.”).
minty green, reading and studying those two cases would take me more time than I have as I am not a lawyer and do not speak legalese. I was going to print them out to read but realised it is over 30 pages of small print which is more than I am willing to study. If you want to summarize the cases and cite the relevant passages I can try to discuss them.
At any rate, a quick look at the shorter one does not support what you say. Maybe a more thorough study would but at first glance what I get is that the SCOTUS dismissed the case not on the grounds that you claim that the president is free to ignore the congress but rather on the contrary grounds that the Congress who would be the one entitled to sue had not done so.
Now, if the congress had chosen to enforce the treaty I can’t see how the president can refuse. All the SCOTUS said is that the Congress was not complaining but it implied if the congress would sue then the case would be “ripe” for their review.
The SCOTUS does not say in any way shape or form that the president is free to ignore the treaties ratified by the Congress. that would clearly be in violation of the constitution.
At any rate, this is getting to take more time than I have. I do not think I am ready to study 30 pages of legalese in detail. I guess we shall just have to disagree on the major issues although I admit there are many shades to the issue where we would probably agree.
I read the short one and it does not support what you said at all. The way I understand it it says that the plaintiff who brought the suit does not have legal standing to do so but it does not prejudge the substance of his claim. What it says is that the President and the Congress are two branches of the government and it should be the Congress who could bring the suit but not individual members. What it says is that it is up to the Congress to demand that the President comply with the treaty and it is up to the Congress to decide if the President is complying or not or even if they care or not. If the Congress does not say anything one must assume they are OK with what the President is doing and individual memebers do not have the standing to complain. Which makes perfect sense to me and which is nothing like what you imply.
When the SCOTUS rules it has no jurisdiction to protect X act in the state of Y the SCOTUS is not saying it is endorsing or condeming or even has an opinion on the act of doing X. It does not even get to that.
When a court says the plaintiff does not have legal standing to bring a suit regarding act Z, the court is in no way implying or giving any opinion on whether act Z is legal or illegal, good or bad, moral or immoral.
In this case the SCOTUS said it was the Congress who would have the standing to sue and
which implies the Congress could demand that the President comply with the laws and treaties the Congress has passed.
But, yes, I am unwilling to dedicate a lot of time to this and I still insist I am right and I do not think that is an unreasonable position. I am not willing to dedicate countless hours to supporting every single opinion and I do not think anybody else is either. i am not willing to spend the rest of my lifetime debunking every free energy document and yet I am quite certain of where the truth is. If I tell you there is a paper written in Chinese in a library in Peking which proves conclusively that you are wrong, would you suspend your assertions and go searching for it? Of course not. I think I have done a resonable amount of reading and that is my opinion. At first glance nothing which you have quoted seems to contradict it but I am not going to spend several hours studying something just to show that it does not say what you say it says. One is enough thankyouverymuch. We will agree to disagree. This has already gone way beyond the scope of GQ and we are deep in GD.
sailor, I didn’t take the time to read through the material either, but based on what you and minty have said to date, here’s my take:
Ever see one of those articles where somebody is bringing truly bizarre lawsuits – not just one or two, but in batches, and the judge keeps ruling them frivolous? Dredging up old long-in-abeyance laws and accusing somebody he dislikes of having broken them?
One tool the courts use to combat having to deal with such suits is “standing” – you must have suffered a real “injury,” or be in such clear imminent danger of “injury” that any reasonable man would agree that it’s gonna happen in the absence of intervention, to have “standing” to bring a suit. Just because you think the law is wrong does not give you standing; it must actually work an “injury” on you. (Injury is a term of art here – things like the neighbors’ fence blocking sunlight from your yard, or having property formerly worth $200,000 that loses value thanks to the neighbors’ activities, are “inujuries” in this context.)
When you get into constitutional law, “standing” can become positively arcane, though a good scholar of constitutional law can explain it in a few dense paragraphs. But it’s one of the tools that the Supremes, particularly under the Rehnquist Court, have used to keep their caseload manageable.
What I’m gathering from you guys’ remarks this case is saying, is that we have a case where a duly negotiated and ratified treaty is not being carried out by the Administration, and a Congressman has brought suit to compel the Administration to follow the terms of the treaty. And the Supremes are saying, “Look, the Administration may or may not have a duty to carry out the terms of this treaty. But we don’t have to decide that, because you, Mr. Plaintiff Congressman, are not being worked an injury as an individual, and while Congress as a whole may have the right to sue to get laws they’re passed and treaties they’ve ratified enforced, that right does not descend to all 535 of you in the Congress individually. You have no standing to bring this suit, so it’s not a real “case or controversy” in the terms defining what we have to decide. Don’t go away mad; just go away!”
sailor, please take a moment to count the number of justices who put their names to that opinion in the Goldwater case. Then notice the shorter opinion that precedes it. Then notice the blasted outcome, which permitted the president to flush the Taiwan treaty down the toilet.
Then return to fingering your out-of-context sentence from the Pacquet Habana case and calling it your Precious.