Those Pesky Laws

By Cernig The Volokh Conspiracy's Jonathan Adler writes about a new trial balloon being sent up by the extreme Right (although Adler doesn't actually call it that): The morning plenary panel at the Federalist Society's annual lawyers' convention concerns "he Constitution & American Exceptionalism: Citation of Foreign Law." First up is Georgetown University law professor Nicholas Rosenkranz who lays out the basic case against relying upon foreign or international law in constitutional interpretation. ...The most interesting part of Rosenkranz's remarks is a proposal for a constitutional amendment declaring that foreign and international law should not be relied upon to interpret or construe the U.S. Constitution. International law - you know, the Geneva Conventions and suchlike. Watch this one. It will get a lot of propulsion from the Right. Not because it has any chance of actually being an amendment, but because it will help firm up their meme that agreeing with international law and entering into treaties that constrain the unitary executive are somehow unconstitutional and therefore unAmerican.