Law Commons^™

Congress’S Under-Appreciated Power To Define And Punish Offenses Against The Law Of Nations, Andrew Kent

Faculty Scholarship

Perhaps no Article I power of Congress is less understood than the power to define and punish . . . Offences against the Law of Nations. There are few scholarly works about the Clause; Congress, the Supreme Court, and the Executive Branch have seldom interpreted the Clause, and even then they have done so in a cursory and contradictory manner. Relying on textual analysis and Founding-era history and political theory to read the Clause in a different mannner than previous commentators, this Article seeks to rescue the Clause from obscurity and thereby enrich current foreign affairs debates. Not only is …