Comments on Belmont Club"April 2 Notes"

Regarding the role of foreign law in domestic courts I quote Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution
"The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority; ..."

The sources of International Law are Treaties, Custom and Principles as interpreted by "publicists" or scholars. Domestic law in the United States is guided by Statute, the Common Law and precedent (stare decises.) It is wrong to refer to extraneous academic works which are often unproven opinions, and it is wrong to refer to foreign law or decisions that have not been ratified under the U.S. Constitution. The first vice was introduced in Brown versus Board of Education and the second has recently appeared in the opinions of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, to the delight of the New York Times.

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Fletcher Christian (who asked if Obama as the majority shareholder in GM has the right to fire the CEO, his facts regarding the level of public ownership, if any, were disputed by others),
It is not obvious to me that under our Constitution the President of the United States or his government have the power to own stock in any private corporation. The entire machinery of quasi public corporations, such as the U.S. Post Service (since 1970), or more credibly stock companies controled by the government such as Fannie and Freddie, or "a private corporation funded by the American People" PBS, seem to have been created out of thin air by fiat. Now Obama claims to own Chrysler and orders it to merge with Fiat.

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blert,
No American official or officer including the POTUS should bow to any foreign Prince.

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buckets (who accused me of being a lawyer),
You lose. This may be grounds for me to demand satisfaction.
I will have you understand that I know both of my parents Mister.
However I did take classes in International Law from Gidon A.G. Gottlieb, even finished one.

Walt (who said of taxpayers In the pluperfect tense we are scrod),
It was always my belief that Carpe Diem was the fish god.

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Robohobo (who agreed with Fletcher that the world was still complex),
There is a Universe in an atom,
There is all of Life in a single child,
There is Eternity in a woman's smile.

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Roy Lofquist (who claimed all war plans were counter force),
A quibble on your quibble Sir. The distinction in theory between Counter Force and Counter Value targeting was a product of improved navigation systems that permitted smaller warheads to target enemy silos as opposed to the earlier strategy of larger megaton range warheads targeted on cities. We presume that the Soviets and today's Russians went along with our academic and strategic evolution. We have no particular reason to think that the Chinese have.