Behind many of President Obama’s recent forays into the international arena lies the issue of whether the United States is to retain its sovereign status, or merge into something that is new. Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court have decided cases by promoting theories that purport to meld U.S. law with foreign law. International norms are apparently a new prism through which U.S. constitutional law should be interpreted, according to some justices and law professors.
Medellin vs. Texas was a 2007 death penalty case that decided whether the State of Texas must give a psychopath a new trial. Its sordid origins trace to 1993, when Jose Medellin, a Mexican national, murdered two Houston teenagers. He was sentenced to death by a Texas jury, but his lawyers argued on appeal that he hadn’t had access to Mexico’s consulate before he confessed to his crimes.
Mr. Medellin’s claim was that a violation of the 1963 Vienna Convention occurred; diplomats are supposed to be notified when their nationals are arrested. Mexican authorities made the case a referendum on capital punishment and international legal norms, ultimately suing the U.S. in the International Court of Justice at The Hague. The ICJ ruled in Mexico’s favor, ordering states to give Medellin and some 51 other nationals new hearings. The question before the Supreme Court was whether such international dictates must be enforced by sovereign state courts.
Justice John Roberts, writing for the 6-3 majority, ruled that the ICJ finding was not binding because the Vienna Convention is a diplomatic compact that was never intended to automatically create new individual rights enforceable domestically by international bodies. Thus, Texas’s violation of diplomatic protocols called for a diplomatic remedy.
Treaty provisions must be in accord with the plain meaning of the Constitution as it is written, not as some European-style socialists would have them to be. This distinction establishes a fire wall between international and domestic law. It also protects the core American constitutional principles of federalism and the separation of powers.
Medellin also disposed of the Bush Administration’s claims of presidential power. The Bush administration had attempted to calm the diplomatic world by directing states to comply with the ICJ ruling in a 2005 executive order. The court ruled that the president’s power is limited by the Constitution. But the same crowd that was so outraged by President Bush’s claims of executive power, can’t wait to turn greater executive powers over to international politicians who have already banned guns in most of Europe, Australia and Canada, to name a few.
The Medellin majority delivered a victory for the U.S. Constitution. For many years, elite lawyers and politicians have been claiming that the Constitution is always changing based on the needs of each generation. This is not rule of law, but an argument for tyranny that would interlineate international norms in place of bedrock constitutionalism. If Medellin is reversed, UN mandates squelching free speech, gun rights and even the ability to practice your religion may follow.
