The Law of Nations and the United States Constitution
Anthony J. Bellia Jr. and Bradford R. Clark
Abstract
The Law of Nations and the United States Constitution offers anyone interested in constitutional governance in the United States a new lens through which to analyze the role of customary international law in U.S. courts. The book explains that the law of nations has never interacted with the Constitution in any single overarching way. Rather, the Constitution was designed to interact in distinct ways with each of the three traditional branches of the law of nations known to the founders—namely, the law merchant, the law of state-state relations, and the law maritime. By disaggregating how diff ... More
The Law of Nations and the United States Constitution offers anyone interested in constitutional governance in the United States a new lens through which to analyze the role of customary international law in U.S. courts. The book explains that the law of nations has never interacted with the Constitution in any single overarching way. Rather, the Constitution was designed to interact in distinct ways with each of the three traditional branches of the law of nations known to the founders—namely, the law merchant, the law of state-state relations, and the law maritime. By disaggregating how different parts of the Constitution interact with different kinds of customary international law, the book provides a detailed account of historical understandings and judicial precedent that will help judges and scholars more readily identify and resolve constitutional questions involving customary international law today. Part I of the book describes the three traditional branches of the law of nations and examines their relationship with the Constitution. Part II describes the emergence of modern customary international law in the twentieth century, considers how it differs from the traditional branches of the law of nations, and explains why its role in U.S. courts requires an independent, context-specific examination of the Constitution. Part III assesses how both modern customary international law and traditional customary international law interact with the Constitution today.
Keywords:
law of nations,
international law,
Constitution,
separation of powers,
Supreme Court
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2017 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199841257 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2017 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199841257.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Anthony J. Bellia Jr., author
Bradford R. Clark, author
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