In my previous post on this topic, I argued that the international reaction to the Honduran coup potentially augurs a shift in foundational norms governing the relationship between international and domestic legal authority.  I also hinted that I regard such a shift as ill-advised, and noted that some of those in the forefront of the reaction appear to have given little thought to the long-term implications.

As, Doug Cassel’s ASIL Insights analysis notes, “Ordinarily international law imposes its own, autonomous norms for the permissible conduct of a government.  Questions of domestic law – including constitutionality – are left to domestic authorities, both as a matter of their sovereign entitlements, and because they are presumed better able to interpret their own constitution.”  The two reasons that Cassel cites are distinct:  the latter is a matter of respect for a foreign pouvoir constitué, on the ground that standards of legal interpretation are themselves a matter of local law; the former is a matter of respect for a foreign pouvoir constituant, on the ground that where permanently effective, breaches of constitutional order (whether by insurrection or by an existing regime’s pattern of practice) beget their own legality.  For foreign courts, both of these are ordinarily rationales, not for a mere “margin of appreciation,” but for judicial abstention.

However, it is not unknown for international legal questions to turn on a finding about compliance with domestic law, such as where treaty provisions provide that exceptions to specified human rights must be, inter alia, “non-arbitrary” and delineated in domestic law.  In such circumstances, assessing a claim of  violation requires an independent basis for ascertaining the requirements of domestic law.   The criteria for establishing a violation might be relatively deferential, yielding to plausible claims of local expertise in interpreting local norms; interpretation of legal (including especially constitutional) norms depends on all manner of historical, ideological, political, linguistic, and jurisprudential idiosyncracies, and a high court’s authority to say what is lawful counts for much, even in the face of text apparently to the contrary.  Still, one cannot exclude a second-guessing of local judicial authorities on the merits, especially in cases where courts are suspected of participating in a sham. (more…)

Who is the current President of Honduras?  Far from the stuff of quiz shows, this question bears on the very foundations of international law.  The international reaction to the June 28, 2009 ouster of President Manuel Zelaya, though superficially similar to earlier repudiations of coups, is in important respects unprecedented.  Its implications have a profundity that few international actors – least of all, President Zelaya’s strongest international political allies – seem to have considered.

A decade ago, I explored at length the question of Governmental Illegitimacy in International Law.  The title was initially intended as a provocation, since the legitimacy of governments had ordinarily not been considered a proper object of international law.  It had largely been taken as a given that a ruling apparatus exercising “effective control through internal processes” – whether or not formally “recognized” – would be acknowledged to have legal standing to assert rights, incur obligations, exercise powers, and confer immunities on behalf of the underlying sovereign entity that enjoyed membership in the international legal order.

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In my first post, I began to address concerns brought to mind by W. Bradley Wendel’s excellent review for Legal Ethics (12:1) of five books on the “torture memos” generated by the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). That post lamented the tendency of the discourse on the memos’ improprieties to focus on criminal law issues while neglecting non-penal international legal norms, which were violated much more systematically (and, I would argue, with much more egregious human consequences).

There is, however, a flip side to the observation that the legal structure and political culture of the United States do not place breaches of international legal obligation altogether beyond the scope of domestic legal authority or policy consideration. In retrospectively judging the conduct of the memos’ authors – the subject of the still-withheld report of the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, and of potential criminal investigations (in the U.S. and abroad) – one must apply standards in effect at the time and in the specific institutional setting of the activity, however much one may wish to reform those standards prospectively. And here, the case is likely to be closer than is generally imagined, and dependent on more fine-grained assessments than even most legal scholars have appreciated.

As Wendel has elsewhere acknowledged, much of the adverse reaction to the memos stems from revulsion toward very idea of a legalistic rendering of such a morally-charged subject matter. What so many observers find malodorous about the memos is that they seek at all to specify the threshold of criminal liability – especially, with respect to the penal statute implementing the Torture Convention, the line between torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. I have attended fora of legal scholars at which the memos have been condemned as embodying the evils of “positivism.” This charge is understandable, given that even the most rigorous and accurate analysis of this distinction is inevitably a disgusting spectacle. But such a charge can only hearten the memos’ authors and their defenders, since it places them comfortably on the traditionalist side of a perennial debate, and deflects attention from the memos’ distortions of positive law. (more…)

Editor’s Note: See here for a post welcoming Professor Roth

While we continue to await the long-withheld report of the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Professsional Responsibility (OPR) on the conduct embodied in the notorious Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) “torture memoranda,” W. Bradley Wendel sorts out some of the issues in the current issue (12:1) of Legal Ethics. In “The Torture Memos and the Demands of Legality” (earlier version available on SSRN), Wendel reviews five books on the subject, including one authored by protagonist John Yoo. The result is a balanced, but ultimately pointed, account that avoids the oversimplifications that have frequently marked both criticisms and defenses of the memos’ authors.

Though reciting the usual criticisms of some of the memos’ more extravagant claims, Wendel renders a distinctive analysis of the government lawyer’s duties. Wendel concedes “that there are many different virtues of government, of which legality is only one.” He moreover allows that Attorney General Robert Jackson’s 1940 rationalizations of the Destroyers for Bases Agreement were morally necessary even though legally dubious. At least, though, “Jackson’s opinions were cautious and hedged, acknowledged limits to the power asserted by the President, and were no broader than necessary for the task at hand.” John Yoo’s position, by contrast, “really does boil down to a failure to differentiate between policy advising and legal advising. … The rule of law has no independent normative significance for Yoo.”

There are several pertinent nuances here that are worthy of further exploration. I will address one set of these now, and deal with others in a subsequent post.

Among both critics and defenders of the memos, there has been a remarkable inattention to the memos’ treatment of breaches of international human rights and humanitarian law obligations as such, as opposed to international crimes specified by treaty and reflected in domestic implementing legislation. (more…)