“In fact, if the Law of Nations is irrelevant to the Constitution, why are they mentioned IN the Constitution? “
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The ‘Law of Nations’ in the Constitution doesn’t refer to Vattel’s book. It refers to international law, and punishing acts outside the US boundaries.
From the first legal treatise written after Constitutional Ratification:
It will be remembered, that the object of the several states in the adoption of that instrument, was not the establishment of a general consolidated government, which should swallow up the state sovereignties, and annihilate their several jurisdictions, and powers, as states; but a federal government, with powers limited to certain determinate objects; viz. their intercourse and concerns with foreign nations; and with each other, as separate and independent states; and, as members of the same confederacy: leaving the administration of their internal, and domestic concerns, to the absolute and uncontrolable jurisdiction of the states, respectively; except in one or two particular instances, specified, and enumerated in the constitution. And because this principle was supposed not to have been expressed with sufficient precision, and certainty, an amendatory article was proposed, adopted, and ratified; whereby it is expressly declared, that, “the powers not delegated to the United States by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” This article is, indeed, nothing more than an express recognition of the law of nations; for Vattel informs us, “that several sovereign, and independent states may unite themselves together by a perpetual confederacy, without each in particular ceasing to be a perfect state. They will form together a federal republic: the deliberations in common will offer no violence to the sovereignty of each member, though they may in certain respects put some constraint on the exercise of it, in virtue of voluntary engagements.
View of the Constitution of the United States George Tucker
and
There is a natural and a positive law of nations. By the former, every state, in its relations with other states, is bound to conduct itself with justice, good faith, and benevolence; and this application of the law of nature has been called by Vattel, the necessary law of nations, because nations are bound by the law of nature to observe it; and it is termed by others, the internal law of nations, because it is obligatory upon them in point of conscience.
James Kent, Commentaries