The Latest Obama Threat to U.S. Sovereignty

Conn Carroll / April 01, 2009

Ceding control of financial regulations to the European Union is just the beginning of the Obama Administration war on the sovereignty of the United States of America. Just last week, President Barack Obama nominated former Clinton administration official Harold Koh to become the State Department’s legal adviser. Koh describes himself as a “transnationalist” and in a 2006 Penn State International Law Review article he described what this meant:

Generally speaking, the transnationalists tend to emphasize the interdependence between the United States and the rest of the world, while the nationalists tend instead to focus more on preserving American autonomy. The transnationalists believe in and promote the blending of international and domestic law; while nationalists continue to maintain a rigid separation of domestic from foreign law. The transnationalists view domestic courts as having a critical role to play in domesticating international law into U.S. law, while nationalists argue instead that only the political branches can internalize international law.

The transnationalists believe that U.S. courts can and should use their interpretive powers to promote the development of a global legal system, while the nationalists tend to claim that U.S. courts should limit their attention to the development of a national system. (more…)