Written by Taylor Ruble

Friday, 22 May 2009 17:39

As more states flirt with the concept of exerting their own sovereignty under the 10th Amendment of the Constitution, the federal government seems to paying little to no attention.

Where states are saying that the federal government has grown too large, and that they are passing laws that overstep their Constitutional authority, the federal government is looking to submit the United States and all of her citizens to international law.

To support this position, the Obama Administration has nominated Harold Koh, dean of Yale Law School, to be the State Department’s legal adviser, and is also a possible Supreme Court nominee. Koh has stated unequivocally that the U.S. must submit to international law to maintain its moral authority in the world.

Koh refuted the notion that participating in international law requires that the United States surrender its sovereignty, and emphasized that international law is the solution to problems that cross national borders.

Koh’s comments not withstanding, there is a certain amount of sovereignty and power lost by subjecting the United States to international law. For most countries that have embraced international legal authority and its courts, it subjects their citizens to extradition if charges are brought against them by the international court. Furthermore, international law does not recognize the Constitution in its proceedings, making the Constitution null and void in international legal matters.

Traditionally, the United States government has opposed subjecting its own citizens to international law, because it feared its own citizens, soldiers and politicians would be subjected to a potentially politically motivated international court.

This concern has not changed, but the current Administration seems eager to relinquish the nation’s own laws and Constitutional protections guaranteed to its citizens in lieu of embracing a growing one world government mentality.

It would also seem that the move by state government to exert their own Republic’s rights and laws are adequate and needed. Not as a method of protest to a lopsided ideological federal government, but to respond to a decades long trend of the federal government pushing outside of its Constitutional boundaries.