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Internationalization

Cross Posted from Revealing the ACLU: This week we witnessed a move by the ACLU which should rightly enrage any American regardless of stance on specific issues. The move I am referring was that made by the American Civil Liberties Union to take a domestic US battle, over Illegal Immigration, to an international stage.

From the NY Times:

    On behalf of six illegal immigrant workers, including the widow of a Mexican killed on a Brooklyn demolition site, the American Civil Liberties Union and other law and labor groups charged yesterday that the United States has failed to protect basic workplace rights guaranteed under international law.

    The charges came in a petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an arm of the Organization of American States, which includes all the 35 nations of the Western Hemisphere.

    The petition, filed by the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the other groups, is an unusual appeal to an international body to push American courts and lawmakers away from a 2002 Supreme Court ruling known as Hoffman v. National Labor Relations Board. The petitioners say the ruling has had a snowball effect, limiting or denying the basic protection of labor laws to millions of illegal immigrant workers in violation of principles like equal protection before the law and freedom of association under the nation’s international treaty obligations.

The above move can only be defined as an attempt to undercut the sovereignty of the United States and put us under the rule of an international body. That should be enough to raise the blood-pressure of any true blooded American.

I can hear some already sighting the push by the US for UN sanctions and International action against countries like Iran and N. Korea. However, let us be clear that the Illegal Immigration issue is one that stops, by definition, at the US boarder. Weapons of Mass Destruction logically, do not – and effect the international community in a very real sense. There is a wold of difference between the right of the US to sets its own immigration policy, including the treatment of those who enter our country illegally, and the right of a country like N. Korea to engage in the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

As angry as the move by the ACLU and the AFL-CIO makes me, I am more concerned about the trend towards Internationalization I am seeing. The question, paramount in any discussion of Internationalization of US Law, is simply “Do we, as American Citizens, have right to an avenue of justice that is beyond our own boarders?” That is to say, if the Constitution is found to not support our view, whatever that view may be, and we are unsuccessful at changing the law through democratic or legislative action – what then? As Americans, we have the democratic right and ability to change laws we do not agree with, though popular action. Should we fail to change those laws, can it be that our view is not supported by the weight of the people, nor by the Constitution itself? Most certainly.

We have the right to continue to work though the structure of government we have in place, but no right to appeal beyond our borders on issues which are purely domestic. If at first you don’t succeed, try try again – or accept defeat. An appeal to a body outside of the US in an attempt to impact US internal (not international) policy is slap in the face to the process and constitution we hold dear.

The ACLU has been a consistent advocate of the use of International Law in US Courts (Lawrence vs. Texas, Atkins vs Virginia, Goodridge vs. Department of Health). How can we view such advocacy other than an attempt to bypass or undermine the US Constitution?

I have already mentioned that I am a fan of Justice Scalia, and he has also commented a couple of times on the Internationalization of foreign legal views in the US Court systems:

    “We have no authority to look around and say, ‘Wow, things have changed’. It is my view that modern foreign legal material can never be relevant to any interpretation of, that is to say, to the meaning of the U.S. Constitution.”and “The views of other nations, however enlightened the justices of this court may think them to be, cannot be imposed upon Americans through the Constitution.”

Lets remember we are at heart a Democracy. The citizens of the US have never authorized through our duly elected representatives in congress, nor though direct constitutional amendment, the application of any foreign laws or legal precedence in the US. This is not a liberal and conservative issue, as we are all Americans who live under the banner of Democracy.

The ACLUs appeal to a foreign body to rule in their favor where the US people, Legislature, and Courts would not is nothing but a slap in the face of US Citizens. At its core is an elitist mentality that is willing to set aside public sentiment, rule of US law, and the very constitution which has severed this country well for the last 230 years.

Once we allow the rule of international law to invade the US court systems, where can we draw the line? You can’t put that genie back in the bottle and we could well find a legal system which stands on conflicting precedents, or laws counter to our own constitution with the predictable result of judicial and legal chaos with the inevitable mitigation of our constitution to a meaningless document.