scholarly journals One Voice or Many? The Political Question Doctrine and Acoustic Dissonance in Foreign Affairs

2013 ◽  
Vol 2012 (1) ◽  
pp. 233-254
Author(s):  
Daniel Abebe
Author(s):  
Bradley Curtis A

This chapter provides an overview of some of the constitutional, statutory, and common law doctrines that govern the adjudication of foreign affairs–related disputes in the United States. These doctrines include requirements for federal court jurisdiction, “justiciability” limitations such as the political question doctrine, the Erie doctrine concerning federal court application of state law, and the common law “act of state” doctrine. The chapter also discusses more general interpretive principles such as the Charming Betsy canon of construction and deference to the executive branch. The chapter concludes by briefly describing the constitutional authority of U.S. government institutions other than the courts, including the situations in which state law that concerns foreign affairs will be preempted.


Author(s):  
Bradley Curtis A

This chapter provides an overview of some of the constitutional, statutory, and common law doctrines that govern the adjudication of foreign affairs-related disputes in the United States. These doctrines include jurisdictional requirements, “justiciability” limitations such as the political question doctrine, the Erie doctrine concerning federal court application of state law, and the common law “act of state” doctrine. The chapter also discusses more general interpretive principles such as the Charming Betsy canon of construction and deference to the executive branch. The chapter concludes by describing the constitutional authority of U.S. government institutions other than the courts, including the situations in which state law that concerns foreign affairs will be preempted.


1989 ◽  
Vol 83 (4) ◽  
pp. 814-821 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Glennon

The unevenness of congressional oversight, the proclivity of executive foreign affairs agencies for violating the law and the traditional responsibility of the courts as the last guardians of the Constitution—all point to the propriety of an active role for the judiciary in ensuring governmental compliance with the law. Specifically, courts should not decline to resolve foreign affairs disputes between Congress and the President because they present “political questions.” The recent case of Lowry v. Reagan illustrates the serious systemic damage wrought by judicial abstention in such disputes.


Itinerario ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 17-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Már Jónsson

On 2 January 1625, the English ambassador Robert Anstruther met with King Christian IV of Norway and Denmark and requested his participation in a union of Protestant states against Emperor Ferdinand II and the Catholic League in Germany. Within three days, King Christian proposed to contribute five thousand soldiers for one year, as part of an army of almost thirty thousand men. In early June, despite opposition from the Danish Council of State, reluctant to put a huge amount of money into foreign affairs, Christian decided to join what he called “the war for the defence of Lower Saxony”. He then headed an army of mercenaries southwards through Lower Saxony, secured all crossings over the river Weser and prepared to confront the Catholic forces. On 29 November, it was decided that Denmark would be in charge of military operations in Northern Germany, whereas England and the United Provinces would provide a monthly subsidy. The political and military prospects for Denmark were excellent, to say the least. It had the fourth strongest navy in Europe (after Spain and the two new allies), and only a few years before the Danish warships had been described by a French observer as “merveilles de l'océan”. A small standing army of two regiments had recently been established and Denmark was the fourth European state to do so after France, Spain and the neighbouring Sweden.


1980 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert A. Kocis

At the root of the conflict between Berlin and his critics is a fundamental disagreement over the possibility of certainty and over the relation of human ends to politics. Gerald MacCallum's formalist critique obscures the political question of whose values a free person is at liberty to pursue. Macpherson's attempt to defend positive liberty as not rationalistic is shown to fail because he (a) conflates liberty with its conditions and (b) assumes a rational pattern to human moral development. And Crick charges Berlin with ignoring politics, understood as active participation in the polis. Finally, Berlin's conception of politics as a form of human interaction aimed at creating the conditions of human dignity in a situation where we sincerely disagree over the ends of life is shown to be an effort to liberate us to live life for our own purposes. Yet Berlin's defense of liberty is problematic because it is too skeptical; to overcome this difficulty, a non-teleological yet developmentalist account of human nature and a weakly hierarchical account of human values is suggested.


2005 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 87-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivor Chipkin

Abstract:This article considers a burgeoning literature on Johannesburg from the perspective of the sorts of questions it asks about the city. There is a substantial and lively literature on questions of poverty and equality, class and race. These studies are strongly informed by the idea that the mechanisms that produce such inequalities are key to understanding the nature of Johannesburg as a city: in terms of how its economy works and how political institutions function, but also in terms of what sort of city Johannesburg is and can be. I consider sociological and economic studies of the inner city that try to account for demographic shifts in the inner city and for processes of social and physical degeneration. I review urban anthropologies of inner-city society, considering in particular new forms of social and economic organization among inner-city residents. Related to these, I discuss debates among scholars about the prospects for governing the city, paying special attention to the consequences for such readings on partnerships. I also discuss an emerging literature, critical of that above, which seeks to shift analysis of the city toward studies of culture and identity. These literatures do not simply approach the city through different disciplinary lenses (sociology or economy or anthropology or cultural studies) . They come to their studies from different normative perspectives. For some, the key political question of the day is one about social and political equality in its various forms. For others, it is about the degree to which Johannesburg (or Africa) is different from or the same as other places in the world. This paper has tried to bring to the fore the political (and not simply policy) consequences of these different views. It concludes not by seeking to reconcile these perspectives, but by suggesting a way of retaining a commitment to equality and justice while not reducing them simply to questions of economy. At stake, I argue, are questions of democratic culture and of sociability.


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