Again, you seem to view an executive agreement like an executive order, as if there were no legal consequences for breaching it. But international law is a real thing, even when it has no domestic force. If a future president decides to ignore international law, it’s not like the international police are going to come arrest him. He’s not going to be impeached. But ignoring international law does harm US interests. It makes other countries less likely to trust us, makes our appeals to other countries to follow international law more hypocritical, etc.
Our law is what matters. International law says that the Senate doesn’t have to ratify. Our law says it does. And it’s not just ours. Most Western countries don’t let their heads of government just sign agreements himself and call it legally binding.
Ask any judge if Kyoto is legally binding.
Yep, that’s the meat of the situation. It’s a group of people who were elected to the legislative branch, and try to act like they were elected to the executive, showing that they weren’t qualified for either.
Is the US bound to UN decisions?
The US has a veto in the UN but if we do not veto and the UN passes an accord are we bound to follow it? (I really do not know so really asking.)
No, it doesn’t. Are you going to make me cite Supreme Court cases on executive agreements, or can you just Google for yourself?
So Kyoto is binding? Who knew?
Anyway,
Secondly,
Since Congress has to lift sanctions, this is not actually something the President can do on his own. And Congress will not lift sanctions.
Yes, the GOP who made that letter should. For the next few years, the administration should dedicate every available resource to prosecuting each one of them. If they aren’t punished and made to believe this was a bad idea, it will be the new normal for them. When Hillary gets elected, I could totally see the GOP drafting alternative legislation and sending them to other world leaders imploring them to ignore her and strike deals with the GOP instead.
I just hope the Democrats would do the same if a GOP president was ever elected again, just to fuck with him
You have an overly simplistic understanding of both domestic and international law. Some kinds of agreements must be made by treaty. Others can be made by the executive. Both are “binding” in many senses. Your posts do not demonstrate that you even read my earlier explanations, so I’ll just end it here.
That assumes a full deal requires lifting the sanctions Congress controls. That may well turn out to be true. But there are also many sanctions, and aspects of the sanctions, that the President controls (and, indeed, that the US isn’t necessary to at all, which is why this is a multi-lateral agreement).
If a GOP President pursues an international agreement that would never be ratified by the Senate then by all means the Senate should make that clear to those being negotiated with.
It would make no sense for Congress to have a power and not be allowed to talk about it.
Maybe this will help:
There is more to it than that of course. Kind of complex and certainly an excutive order does not equal or have the force of a treaty. That said they do have power and they are far, far from uncommon. In fact they are the norm.
Yes, they are the norm in areas where the President can act alone, such as a SOFA. If he limits the agreement to only what he can legally do, then it’s absolutely fine.
What he cannot do is just say he won’t enforce laws that Congress has passed regarding Iran. he only has discretion where he’s been given discretion on sanctions. And he cannot sign an agreement pledging no new sanctions. That’s Congress’ prerogative, not, his.
What laws regarding Iran is he not enforcing?
I seriously doubt that anyone can or will be prosecuted for sending the letter, and even if they could be I’m not sure it would be productive to do so. Besides, public opinion seems to be largely against them. Even the bastards over at the New York Daily News have labeled the signatories “TRAITORS” in all caps.
But adaher keeps expressing the view that I think makes the letter so foolish, a view which seems to be shared by the 47 senators and their supporters:
The negotiations in Geneva are not some back-room con job, and the Iranian government are not a bunch of backward hicks who don’t know how US law-making works. Tom Cotton seems to think that the content of his letter is going to blow the minds of the Iranian negotiating team. To assume that they are not aware that enactment of the agreement may depend on the support of the legislative branch, and that the president and the legislature don’t always get along, is pretty insulting. I think the Iranian response to the letter was very appropriate.
The Senate GOP may disagree with the spirit of the negotiations, but it’s ridiculous to condescend to the Iranian team with a lesson in US Social Studies. It’s this distorted, movie villain view of Iran that is making these negotiations so difficult in the first place. Congress can talk about it all they want, but they look like a bunch of Jackasses for doing it.
None now, but he can’t disregard sanctions legislation should it pass over his veto or the next President signs it. So he can’t make an agreement with Iran promising no new sanctions for ten years because that’s not something he can promise. Two years, probably, although not certainly.
He can absolutely make agreements that extend beyond his Presidency. Many or even most treaties in American history have parts that extended beyond the president at the time.
There are nearly 19,000 executive agreements that have been negotiated throughout the history of the United States. How many of those do you believe have been negotiated by Republican presidents?
Are you under the impression that Congress did not afford the President any discretion with whether or how to apply sanctions to Iran? Apparently you have never read the law that authorizes sanctions. Big surprise.
If an agreement among the P5+1 is reached, let’s say it can be simplified like this:
- Iran agrees to a series of safeguards for its nuclear program.
- The West agrees to lift various sanctions.
Congress has no authority whatsoever to legislate on issue number one. The legislative power does not extend to what Iran does, nor does it extend to dictating how the President conducts a negotiation with a foreign country. That’s just simply unconstitutional.
So, the question is, to what extent is issue two within the Congressional power? Certainly Congress could pass a bill to cut off all trade with Iran. That is not what they have done so far. The Iran sanctions are implemented in a few laws which allow – not require, but allow – the President to make a determination that Iran is doing something bad, and therefore certain measures have to be taken, like cutting off access to banks or whatnot. Congress has literally empowered the President to make a decision whether or not Iran is doing various bad things. If the President says that Iran is not doing those bad things, there are no sanctions. Congress passed the buck (quite appropriately) to the Executive to decide on how sanctions should be implemented, so the President isn’t stealing any authority from them.
An executive agreement reached along these lines therefore relies on the President’s power to do two things: first, the constitutional power to negotiate with other countries to get them to make concessions; and second, exercise the power that laws have given the President on whether to, or how to, apply sanctions if the President feels it is warranted.
To summarize here, the argument that Obama is exceeding the law and negotiating new matter that ought to be a treaty seems to fall flat on its face. The real issue is that Republicans, and some Democrats, don’t like what Obama might do with his inherent authority as chief diplomat and the statutory authority that Congress gave him to impose – or not impose – sanctions.
But Congress can impose new sanctions over his veto, which he would be bound to implement if the law did not grant discretion to the executive.
There are also conditions on existing sanctions. I don’t know the precise nature of the Iran sanctions’ discretionary clauses, but it it would not be unusual for sanctions to be conditional on the President certifying that they are no longer a state sponsor of terrorism. Which he can only do if he wants to look even more ridiculous than the 47 Congressmen. In the case of Cuba, many of the sanctions are conditional on Cuba holding elections. So Congress can tie a President’s hands in this regard. Therefore it would be inadvisable for a President to make promises about things he can’t do without breaking the law(which he obviously has no problem doing.).
In this case none. But suppose someone conspires with the Mexican government to get a treaty passed that said Americans were not required to get health insurance (Obamacare) within 100 miles of the Mexican border. That would be a violation of the Logan Act since it seeks to use a treaty to contradict a law.
You keep on harping on this idea that the President is taking some power away from Congress by negotiating an executive agreement that, on first glance, appears to be within the discretionary powers that are afforded to him by statute and the Constitution. I have zero doubt whatsoever that your repeatedly stated opinion that the President is intruding on some Congressional power is based entirely on your distaste of the President and his political views, rather than any understanding of the law at hand.
You cannot argue that the President negotiating an executive agreement is invalid or inappropriate because Congress might do something in the future. That’s just nonsense. It is like me arguing that you shouldn’t be allowed to buy firearms because Congress and the states might get rid of the Second Amendment in the future.
And here is a key operative section of the Iran Sanctions Act, as amended:
Sorry about the formatting, but you get the jist: Congress gave the President quite broad authority to waive sanctions for one year at a time if he believes it is in the interests of the U.S. to do so.
I’m sorry, I think I just read a hypothetical where a future GOP President conspires to create an exemption to domestic USA health-insurance law for only some of his citizens, on the border of a foreign country with a Spanish-style tradition of health care as an entitlement, for reasons that are incomprehensible to me, even now, as I am dreaming.
Because I have clearly fallen into waking REM sleep due to staying up all night. I fear such a post is either too nonsensical to even exist in the sober eye of the wakeful mind, or too subtle for my dreaming forebrain to parse.
I need to go to sleep before I comment more in this thread.