Posted on 03/09/2005 8:35:05 PM PST by neverdem
Prompted by an international tribunal's decision last year ordering new hearings for 51 Mexicans on death rows in the United States, the State Department said yesterday that the United States had withdrawn from the protocol that gave the tribunal jurisdiction to hear such disputes.
The withdrawal followed a Feb. 28 memorandum from President Bush to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales directing state courts to abide by the decision of the tribunal, the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The decision required American courts to grant "review and reconsideration" to claims that the inmates' cases had been hurt by the failure of local authorities to allow them to contact consular officials.
The memorandum, issued in connection with a case the United States Supreme Court is scheduled to hear this month, puzzled state prosecutors, who said it seemed inconsistent with the administration's general hostility to international institutions and its support for the death penalty.
The withdrawal announced yesterday helps explains the administration's position.
Darla Jordan, a State Department spokeswoman, said the administration was troubled by foreign interference in the domestic capital justice system but intended to fulfill its obligations under international law.
But Ms. Jordan said, "We are protecting against future International Court of Justice judgments that might similarly interfere in ways we did not anticipate when we joined the optional protocol."
Peter J. Spiro, a law professor at the University of Georgia, said the withdrawal was unbecoming.
"It's a sore-loser kind of move," Professor Spiro said. "If we can't win, we're not going to play."
Ms. Jordan emphasized that the United States was not withdrawing from the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations itself, which gives people arrested abroad the right to contact their home countries' consulates. But the United States is withdrawing, she said, from an optional protocol that gives the International Court of Justice in The Hague, the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, jurisdiction to hear disputes under the convention.
"While roughly 160 countries belong to the consular convention," she said, "less than 30 percent of those countries belong to the optional protocol. By withdrawing from the protocol, the United States has joined the 70 percent of the countries that do not belong. For example, Brazil, Canada, Jordan, Russia and Spain do not belong."
Among the countries that have signed the protocol are Australia, Britain, Germany and Japan.
Ms. Jordan said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice informed Kofi Annan, the secretary general of the United Nations, of the move on Monday.
Harold Hongju Koh, the dean of the Yale Law School and a former State Department official in the Clinton administration, said the Bush administration's strategy was counterproductive.
"International adjudication is an important tool in a post-cold-war, post-9/11 world," Dean Koh said.
For 40 years, from 1946 to 1986, the United States accepted the general jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice in all kinds of cases against other nations that had also agreed to the court's jurisdiction. After an unfavorable ruling from the court in 1986 over the mining of Nicaragua's harbors, the United States withdrew from the court's general jurisdiction.
But it continued to accept its jurisdiction under about 70 specific treaties, including the protocol withdrawn from on Monday, said Lori F. Damrosch, a law professor at Columbia. The other treaties cover subjects like navigation, terrorism, narcotics and copyrights, and they are unaffected.
The United States Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the case of José Ernesto Medellín, a Mexican on death row in Texas, on March 28. Mr. Medellín asks the court to enforce last year's judgment of the international tribunal. Texas opposes the request.
When the federal government filed its supporting brief for Texas in the case at the end of last month, it appended the memorandum from the president to the attorney general.
Before the administration's strategy came into focus, international law professors greeted the memorandum with amazement.
"This is a president who has been openly hostile to international law and international institutions knuckling under, and knuckling under where there are significant federalism concerns," Professor Spiro said.
As it turned out, Dean Koh said, the government had "an integrated strategy."
"Element 1," he continued, "was to take the bat out of the Supreme Court's hand."
Lawyers for Mr. Medellín reacted cautiously. In a motion filed in the Supreme Court yesterday, Donald F. Donovan, a lawyer with the New York law firm Debevoise & Plimpton, asked the court to put off hearing argument until Texas state courts could consider Mr. Medellín's claim.
For their part, Texas prosecutors have not conceded that the president has the power to force courts there to reopen the Medellín case.
In a statement, Jerry Strickland, a spokesman for Attorney General Greg Abbott of Texas, questioned the president's authority.
"The State of Texas believes no international court supersedes the laws of Texas or the laws of the United States," Mr. Strickland said. "We respectfully believe the executive determination exceeds the constitutional bounds for federal authority."
Sandra Babcock, a Minnesota lawyer who represents the government of Mexico, said she had no doubt that the president was authorized to instruct state courts to reopen Mr. Medellín's case and 50 others.
"The law is on our side," Ms. Babcock said. "The president is on our side. I keep having to slap myself."
YEEEEEEE-HAW!
THANK YOU MR. ABBOTT, AND MR. STRICKLAND, FOR HAVING THE COJONES TO SAY WHAT NEEDED SAYIN'! AND THANK YOU, MR. PRESIDENT, FOR GETTING US OUT OF THE HAGUE!
LOL, that's a good one.
We can only wish. I ordered the book yesterday, looking forward to reading it.
Maybe we need to do what castro did in the mariel boat lift. FIll up a planes with the worst of the illegal alien criminals and fly them deep into south america or where ever south of the border and release them there.
Ping to 65. 8)
Peter J. Spiro - Dean and Virginia Rusk Professor of International Law
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 University of Georgia Phone: (706) 542-5145 Secretary:: K. Bramlett
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What is wrong with this equation? .. "foreign interference in the domestic capital justice system..."
How about this boiler plate, edited, version:
"foreign interference in the (U.S.) domestic [fill in the blank here] system.."
Good God, what would George Washington have to say? Our Founding Fathers (and their wives) would have none of this B.S. Our National Sovereignty, Independence and Constitution, and agents of the Aforementioned, are faithful and steady bulwarks "amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing" (Luther).
We live in dangerous times indeed and perhaps the stakes have never been higher. Hence, the aggressive shadowboxing, etc. ... Imagine if Kerry got in? (..sorry to scare anyone). God Bless GW!
No, this is not a game, and our National Sovereignty is also "not a game", it is our American Way of Life, as is our most excellent Constitution and the Amendments thereto and this is deadly serious business. I am starting to think that many in the U.S. honestly would feel "more at home" in Beijing or Moscow.....
I'm getting sick of all this Monkey Business. It never ends, does it?
I am always encouraged when a member of the Clinton administration criticizes the Bush administration. He must be doing the right thing!
I believe that too!
Justice League it is! I'm having fun just picturing this!
Another nail in the multilateral coffin. Conservatives won the election at home, why would they hand back control to foreign leftists.
Isn't this quote more telling than anything else?
"Spiro was awarded an Open Society Institute/Soros Foundation fellowship to study the law of American citizenship in..."
"U.S. Says It Has Withdrawn From World Judicial Body"
I guess this would be sort of a "Judicious Interruptus".
It's about time.
Thanks for the ping.
thanks for the post... he doesn't have much of a resume...
outsourcing sovereignty/justice ping
"Contempt Of World Court"
Excellent! Now on to withdrawing from the UN.
Uncle Sam, John Bull, and Australian and Polish national heroes wouldn't be a bad idea...Tadeusz Kosciuszko and Banjo Patterson spring to mind. We could have an Italian hero sort of like Julian Basheer on DS9, one you're always expecting will run or stab the other heroes in the back (Machiavelli, perhaps?), and a few smaller heroes for the remaining allies, probably some that are always looking for money or help with minor things... 8)
bttt
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