Law Commons^™

Zivotofsky V. Kerry: A Foreign Relations Law Bonanza, Ingrid Wuerth Brunk

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This short paper on Zivotofsky v. Kerry gives an overview of the case and analyzes its significance for international law in constitutional interpretation and for the Supreme Court’s “normalization” of foreign relations law.

In terms of the overall significance of the case, it is a bonanza of foreign relations issues and doctrine: the executive Vesting Clause, the President as the “sole organ” of the nation, the need for the nation to speak with “one voice,” Curtiss-Wright, Youngstown, diplomatic history and practice, the Republic of Texas, secrecy and dispatch, Citizen Genet, the Spanish-American war, international law in constitutional interpretation, formalism and …

The Normalization Of Foreign Relations Law, Ganesh Sitaraman, Ingrid Wuerth

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The defining feature of foreign relations law is that it is distinct from domestic law. Courts have recognized that foreign affairs are political by their nature and thus unsuited to adjudication, that state and local involvement is inappropriate in foreign affairs, and that the President has the lead role in foreign policymaking. In other words, they have said that foreign relations are exceptional. But foreign relations exceptionalism, "the belief that legal issues arising from foreign relations are functionally, doctrinally, and even methodologically distinct from those arising in domestic policy,” was not always the prevailing view. In the early twentieth century, …