Harvard Law Review: Volume 128, Number 7 - May 2015
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About this ebook
The Harvard Law Review, May 2015, is offered in a digital edition. Contents include:
* Article, "The Normalization of Foreign Relations Law," by Ganesh Sitaraman and Ingrid Wuerth
* Book Review, "The Family, in Context," by Maxine Eichner
* Note, "Forgive and Forget: Bankruptcy Reform in the Context of For-Profit Colleges"
In addition, the issue features student commentary on Recent Cases and policy positions, including such subjects as: retroactive prosecution of conspiracy to commit war crimes at Guantanamo; holding a legislature in contempt for unconstitutional funding of education; bullying and criminal harassment law; first amendment implications of high school suppression of violent speech; using statistics to prove False Claims Act liability; first amendment issues raised by a requirement that sex offenders provide internet identifiers to police; BIA ruling that Guatemalan woman fleeing domestic violence meets asylum threshold; and FDA regulation on nutritional information under the Affordable Care Act. Finally, the issue features several summaries of Recent Publications.
The Harvard Law Review is a student-run organization whose primary purpose is to publish a journal of legal scholarship. The Review comes out monthly from November through June and has roughly 2400 pages per volume. The organization is formally independent of the Harvard Law School. Student editors make all editorial and organizational decisions. This issue of the Review is May 2015, the seventh issue of academic year 2014-2015 (Volume 128). The digital edition features active Contents, linked notes, and proper ebook and Bluebook formatting.
Harvard Law Review
The Harvard Law Review is a student-run organization whose primary purpose is to publish a journal of legal scholarship. The Review comes out monthly from November through June and has roughly 2500 pages per volume. The organization is formally independent of Harvard Law School. Primary articles are written by leading legal scholars, with contributions in the form of case summaries and Notes by student members.
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Harvard Law Review - Harvard Law Review
Volume 128
Number 7
May 2015
Smashwords edition. Copyright © 2015 by The Harvard Law Review Association. All rights reserved. This work or parts of it may not be reproduced, copied or transmitted (except as permitted by sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), by any means including voice recordings and the copying of its digital form, without the written permission of the print publisher.
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Cataloging (Volume 128, Number 7):
ISBN 978-1-61027-838-6 (ePUB)
CONTENTS
ARTICLE
The Normalization of Foreign Relations Law
by Ganesh Sitaraman and Ingrid Wuerth
[128 HARV. L. REV. 1897]
BOOK REVIEW
The Family, in Context
by Maxine Eichner
[128 HARV. L. REV. 1980]
NOTE
Forgive and Forget: Bankruptcy Reform in the Context of For-Profit Colleges
[128 HARV. L. REV. 2018]
RECENT CASES
Ex Post Facto Clause — Guantánamo Prosecutions — D.C. Circuit Reinterprets Military Commissions Act of 2006 to Allow Retroactive Prosecution of Conspiracy to Commit War Crimes. — Al Bahlul v. United States, 767 F.3d 1 (D.C. Cir. 2014)
[128 HARV. L. REV. 2040]
Education Law — Washington Supreme Court Holds Legislature in Contempt for Failing to Make Adequate Progress Toward Remedying Unconstitutional Education Funding Scheme. — McCleary v. State, No. 84362-7 (Wash. Sept. 11, 2014) (order of contempt)
[128 HARV. L. REV. 2048]
Juvenile Delinquency Law — Harassment and Bullying — Iowa Supreme Court Holds that Evidence of Taunting Is Insufficient to Constitute Criminal Harassment. — In re D.S., 856 N.W.2d 348 (Iowa 2014)
[128 HARV. L. REV. 2058]
First Amendment — Student Speech — Ninth Circuit Denies Motion to Rehear En Banc Decision Permitting School Suppression of Potentially Violence-Provoking Speech. — Dariano v. Morgan Hill Unified School District, 767 F.3d 764 (9th Cir. 2014), cert. denied, 2015 WL 1400871
[128 HARV. L. REV. 2066]
False Claims Act — Proof of Liability — Eastern District of Tennessee Rules that Statistical Extrapolation May Suffice to Prove Liability. — United States ex rel. Martin v. Life Care Centers of America, Inc., Nos. 1:08-cv-251, 1:12-cv-64, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 142660 (E.D. Tenn. Sept. 29, 2014)
[128 HARV. L. REV. 2074]
First Amendment — Speaker-Based Distinctions — Ninth Circuit Upholds Preliminary Injunction Barring Enforcement of California Requirement that Sex Offenders Provide Notice of Internet Identifiers and Service Providers to Law Enforcement. — Doe v. Harris, 772 F.3d 563 (9th Cir. 2014)
[128 HARV. L. REV. 2082]
RECENT ADJUDICATION
Asylum Law — Membership in a Particular Social Group — Board of Immigration Appeals Holds that Guatemalan Woman Fleeing Domestic Violence Meets Threshold Asylum Requirement. — Matter of A-R-C-G-, 26 I. & N. Dec. 388 (B.I.A. 2014)
[128 HARV. L. REV. 2090]
RECENT REGULATION
Health Regulation — Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — Food and Drug Administration Finalizes Regulations Requiring Restaurants and Similar Retail Food Establishments to Label Calories on Menus. — Food Labeling; Nutrition Labeling of Standard Menu Items in Restaurants and Similar Retail Food Establishments, 79 Fed. Reg. 71,156 (Dec. 1, 2014) (to be codified at 21 C.F.R. pts. 11, 101)
[128 HARV. L. REV. 2098]
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
[128 HARV. L. REV. 2106]
About the Harvard Law Review
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ARTICLE
THE NORMALIZATION OF FOREIGN RELATIONS LAW
Ganesh Sitaraman & Ingrid Wuerth
[128 HARV. L. REV. 1897 (2015)]
CONTENTS
THE NORMALIZATION OF FOREIGN RELATIONS LAW
Ganesh Sitaraman & Ingrid Wuerth
*
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, a revolution took place in foreign relations law. Under the intellectual leadership of Justice Sutherland, the Supreme Court adopted the idea that foreign affairs are an exceptional sphere of policymaking, separate from domestic law and best suited to exclusively federal, and primarily executive, control. The exceptionalist approach has dominated foreign relations law since that time, but it has always had questionable foundations.
Since the end of the Cold War, there has been a second revolution in foreign relations law, one whose scope and significance rival the Sutherland revolution, but one that has gone largely unrecognized. Over the last twenty-five years, the Supreme Court has increasingly rejected the idea that foreign affairs are different from domestic affairs. Instead, it has started treating foreign relations issues as if they were run-of-the-mill domestic policy issues, suitable for judicial review and governed by ordinary separation of powers and statutory interpretation principles. This normalization
of foreign relations law has taken place in three waves. It began with the end of the Cold War and the rise of globalization in the 1990s. It continued — counterintuitively — during the war on terror, despite the strong case for exceptionalism in a time of exigency. And it has proceeded, during the Roberts Court, to undermine justiciability, federalism, and executive dominance — the very heart of exceptionalism.
This Article documents the normalization of foreign relations law over the last twenty-five years. It demonstrates how normalization can be applied to a wide variety of doctrines and debates in foreign relations law, ranging from the proper interpretation of Youngstown to the applicability of administrative law doctrines in foreign affairs to reforms in the foreign sovereign immunity and state secrets regimes. Ultimately, this Article argues that courts and scholars should embrace normalization as the new paradigm for foreign relations law.
INTRODUCTION
The defining feature of foreign relations law is that it is distinct from domestic law. In foreign relations, the need for speed and secrecy is paramount. In foreign relations, decisions need to be uniform across the country. In foreign relations, the Executive has special expertise compared to courts and Congress. And because of its subject matter, in foreign relations, one wrong turn can lead to national calamity. As a result, courts have recognized that foreign relations is political by its nature and thus unsuited to adjudication, that state and local involvement is inappropriate, and that the President has the lead role in foreign policymaking.¹ In other words, foreign relations is exceptional.
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 late nineteenth century, courts and commentators treated legal issues in foreign relations just as they treated legal issues in domestic affairs: as defined by the orthodox, formalist vision of the Constitution, driven by the specific enumerated powers of the federal government and the reserved powers of the states and people. But in the early twentieth century, a revolution took place in foreign relations law. Under the intellectual leadership of Justice Sutherland, the Supreme Court adopted the idea that foreign affairs are an exceptional sphere of policymaking, distinct from domestic law and best suited to exclusively federal, and primarily executive, control.² The consequences were significant. Exceptionalism kept foreign relations conflicts out of the courts, through an expansive political question doctrine. It meant the federal government trumped state and local governments when it came to issues touching on foreign relations. And within the federal political branches, it meant that the executive branch had expansive authority and received considerable deference. Over the subsequent decades, foreign relations exceptionalism became the dominant approach to cases dealing with foreign affairs. Indeed, scholars have even pointed out that exceptionalism was so powerful in the decades after the New Deal that the study of the constitutional law of foreign relations shifted from the province of constitutional law scholars (as it had been in the nineteenth century) to that of international law scholars.³
Since the end of the Cold War, however, there has been a second revolution in foreign relations law. Over the last twenty-five years, in a series of decisions on the core areas of exceptionalism — justiciability, federalism, and executive power — the Supreme Court has rejected the idea that foreign affairs are different from domestic affairs. Instead, the Court has treated foreign relations issues as if they were run-of-the-mill domestic policy issues, suitable for judicial review and governed by ordinary separation of powers and statutory interpretation principles. The result is that foreign relations law is being normalized.
Although scholars have criticized certain aspects of exceptionalism and have identified particular cases of normalization, the true scope and significance of normalization has gone unrecognized. In this Article, we argue that the normalization of foreign relations law has proceeded in three waves over the last twenty-five years, and we spell out its implications for a variety of scholarly debates and legal doctrines.
We hope to make three contributions: First, we seek to document the normalization of foreign relations law over the last quarter century. In many cases, scholars and commentators have recognized when the Court has uncharacteristically treated foreign relations cases as unexceptional.⁴ But to date there has not been a comprehensive account of this trend. We believe that when viewed from the perspective of the history and the dominance of foreign relations exceptionalism, the three waves of normalization amount to a revolution — akin to, and in some ways the reverse of, the Sutherland revolution in the early twentieth century. In particular, because the normalization revolution has, surprisingly, continued in both war and peace, we believe it is not a fad, but a fundamental paradigm shift. Courts and scholars need to adapt accordingly.
We also seek to make a comprehensive case for normalization across foreign relations law. Our second aim is therefore to demonstrate the weaknesses of foreign relations exceptionalism. Foreign relations exceptionalism was an innovation of the early twentieth century, not a permanent or original part of our constitutional system. Perhaps more importantly, as an analytic matter, foreign affairs are less distinct from domestic affairs than exceptionalists believe. Scholars have explored this history and questioned the distinctness of foreign affairs in a variety of areas.⁵ We unite these criticisms and provide a theoretical defense for not treating foreign relations law as exceptional.
Our third aim is to show how normalization can radiate beyond the three core areas of foreign relations law and influence a variety of debates in the field. We show how normalization helps clarify existing doctrines including Youngstown;⁶ how it applies in scholarly debates on the applicability of Chevron⁷ in foreign relations, the role of soft law
forms of international cooperation, and the legal framework for international delegations; and how it suggests that foreign official immunity and state secrets law should be reformed.
The Article proceeds in three Parts. In Part I, we define foreign relations exceptionalism, describe its rise in the twentieth century, and criticize its basis and justifications. We begin by arguing that foreign relations exceptionalism is best understood as the belief that legal issues arising from foreign relations are functionally, doctrinally, and even methodologically distinct from those arising in domestic policy. Despite the dominance of foreign relations exceptionalism over the last eighty years and the frequent use of the term in the scholarly literature, it remains undertheorized. In the context of the debates on exceptionalism, we believe our definitional discussion is an independent contribution, regardless of whether one agrees with our broader normalization thesis. Part I then describes the rise of this framework in the early twentieth century and its focus on three central areas: nonjusticiability, which suggests expansive deference to the political branches; federalism, which rejects state and local participation in foreign relations; and executive dominance, which allocates power within the federal political branches to the executive.
In Part II, we describe the three waves of foreign relations normalization. The first wave of normalization took place in the 1990s. With the end of the Cold War, scholars began to challenge the prevailing exceptionalist approach. They questioned the distinction between foreign and domestic affairs in an age of globalization and sought to resurrect federalism in foreign affairs, just as it was being revived in domestic constitutional law. Unexpectedly, the Supreme Court also refrained from applying exceptionalist reasoning in a few important foreign relations cases. Still, the significance of the first wave of normalization was primarily foundational: scholars cracked the armor of foreign relations exceptionalism, identifying its relatively recent emergence, its doctrinal problems, and its analytic failures.
The second wave of normalization began, counterintuitively, with September 11 and the war on terror. With the onset of a national security crisis and ultimately two wars, many predicted a resurgence of foreign relations exceptionalism — which would have left the first wave of normalization as a historical curiosity, an outlier. Indeed, the Bush Administration seems to have expected as much, justifying many of its war-on-terror decisions with exceptionalist legal reasoning. But surprisingly, the war on terror did not lead to the full-throated return of exceptionalism. Rather, it prompted the faster, deeper, and broader normalization of foreign relations law. In Rasul v. Bush,⁸ Hamdi v. Rumsfeld,⁹ Hamdan v. Rumsfeld,¹⁰ and Boumediene v. Bush,¹¹ the Supreme Court rejected claims of nonjusticiability and expansive executive power, and instead relied on typical statutory interpretation, as would be expected in domestic law. Scholars increasingly began to explore the applicability of administrative law doctrines and principles to foreign affairs. Lawyers developed expertise and specialization in national security cases, particularly surrounding Guantanamo detainees. The significance of the second wave of normalization cannot be overstated. In the midst of wartime exigency — perhaps the optimal context for a reassertion of foreign relations exceptionalism — normalization continued to proceed apace. Importantly, as national security and foreign relations legal issues proliferated during the war on terror, lower court judges, lawyers, and scholars interacted more frequently with foreign relations issues. Frequency leads to normalcy, and foreign relations law seemed less and less exceptional.
In the last decade, the Roberts Court has ushered in a third wave of normalization. We give the Roberts Court’s normalization efforts an extended treatment, as they have not yet been assessed comprehensively. The Court has increasingly jettisoned exceptionalism in each of its three central areas: justiciability, federalism, and executive dominance. In Zivotofsky v. Clinton¹² and Bond v. United States¹³ (Bond I), cases on the political question doctrine and standing, respectively, the Court rejected the exceptionalist approach and declared the issues in those cases as suitable for adjudication. In Bond v. United States¹⁴ (Bond II), Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting,¹⁵ and Medellín v. Texas,¹⁶ the Court took on the federalism prong of exceptionalism, treating state-federal relations as a matter of ordinary interpretation. And in Medellín and a variety of statutory interpretation cases — Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co.,¹⁷ Morrison v. National Australia Bank Ltd.,¹⁸ Bond II, and Republic of Argentina v. NML Capital, Ltd.¹⁹ — the Court refused to defer to the executive branch, challenging the principle of executive dominance. Although the full significance of the third wave of normalization will not be clear without historical distance, the Court increasingly seems to be treating separation of powers and statutory interpretation questions similarly in the foreign and domestic contexts. Scholars, too, have embraced this trend, documenting normalization in particular fields and exploring themes that cut across foreign and domestic spheres, as if there were little relevant distinction. Exceptionalism continues to wane.
This changing nature of U.S. foreign relations law raises an obvious normative question: should exceptionalism be preserved or rejected? In Part III, we argue that analyzing foreign relations law as ordinary law is not so threatening. In fact, the considerations that are often cited to support exceptionalism — flexibility, speed, secrecy, the nature of the subject matter, error costs, and the like — all operate at far too high a level of generality. The foreign versus domestic divide is hardly justifiable on its own terms as narrowly tailored to these underlying values, and exceptionalism is both over- and under-inclusive as a proxy for these underlying functional values. Indeed, foreign affairs law generally raises the same competing concerns that emerge in ordinary domestic law and that are addressed through separation of powers, federalism, and administrative law. The weak justifications for exceptionalism provide no reason to fear treating foreign affairs as akin to domestic affairs. The burden, we argue, should shift to those who prefer exceptionalism, those who prefer normalization along the exceptionalist baseline, or those who prefer convergence — all of which depart from the familiar domestic baseline of separation of powers, federalism, and administrative law.
The normalization of foreign relations law is ongoing, not complete, and in Part IV we show how normalization could be extended to other important areas and debates in foreign relations law. First, we argue that the Supreme Court should eliminate stray remarks and exceptionalist arguments in its decisions on justiciability, federalism, and executive power. After the normalization cases of the last few decades, these outlier references are unnecessary and inappropriate. Second, we argue for normalizing Youngstown, possibly the most famous case on the separation of powers. By distinguishing clearly between a predicate statutory interpretation question and the constitutional law question, courts can normalize both. The result will be greater use of ordinary statutory interpretation and ordinary constitutional interpretation in cases raising executive power concerns. Third, in recent years scholars have engaged in a debate on the appropriate level of deference to the executive branch in foreign relations cases. This debate has turned in part on the applicability of Chevron deference, with some prominent scholars calling for Chevron to apply even more broadly in the foreign relations context than in the domestic. This position conflicts with normalization, and we instead argue for the normal application of administrative law doctrines set forth in Chevron, Skidmore,²⁰ Seminole Rock,²¹ and State Farm.²² We also argue that normal interpretive principles should apply in the context of deference to the executive’s factual determinations and interpretation of treaties. In recent years, the Supreme Court has issued decisions suggesting conflicting approaches to these questions. We show how normalization would address this confusion, in part through the adoption of the Skidmore and State Farm standards. Fourth, scholars have recently been concerned with the delegation of power to international organizations. We argue that international delegation should be seen as similar to normal domestic delegation, and that it will not lead to the worrying conclusions some scholars have identified. Finally, we take on the issues of foreign official immunity and the state secrets privilege. We argue that thinking of these fields as susceptible to administrative action, requiring congressional delegation of rulemaking authority or the equivalent, could readily solve ongoing debates. These areas represent (at least some of) the unfinished business of normalization. A brief conclusion follows.
Before turning to Part I, a few clarifications are in order. First, we are not arguing that normalization is complete. Indeed, our efforts to extend normalization to areas in which it has not been adopted would themselves undermine such a broad or universal claim. Our argument is more limited and precise, and it has descriptive, predictive, and normative components. Descriptively, we argue that normalization is and has been at work, slowly but surely, over the past twenty-five years. Because these stirrings of normalization cut to the heart of foreign relations exceptionalism and have continued in war and peace, we believe they are revolutionary in their significance. We therefore suspect and predict that they are likely to be expanded to other areas of foreign relations law. Normatively, we argue that the courts and scholars should embrace the normalization trend, and we show how they can do so.
Second, we do not seek here to explain why normalization is taking place. We have a number of hypotheses: the perception of reduced risk of negative foreign affairs consequences after the Cold War, scholarly attacks on exceptionalist doctrine, the rise of the conservative legal movement, the Bush Administration’s overreaching legal arguments coupled with shocking uses of executive power, and the widespread acceptance of Chevron. But these hypotheses are simply that; a thorough account of the reasons for why normalization has taken root must be left to another day.
Finally, we do not claim to be the first to challenge foreign relations exceptionalism as a theoretical matter, or the first to suggest that cases and doctrines are being normalized. Indeed, we gratefully recognize the many scholars who have identified normalization in their particular fields. These scholars have, however, failed to describe the full scope of normalization. The trend has taken place over a twenty-five year period. It has touched many areas of law. It has continued in war and peace. It has changed the very core of foreign relations law. As a result of this transformation, we should no longer view foreign relations as exceptional, with outlier cases that are normal.
We should now expect normal
treatment of foreign relations issues — and characterize the remaining instances of exceptionalism as outliers. Normalization is the new normal.
I. THE RISE OF FOREIGN RELATIONS EXCEPTIONALISM
A. Defining Foreign Relations Exceptionalism
While scholars have discussed foreign relations exceptionalism for more than a decade, the meaning of the term itself remains undertheorized, making it difficult to evaluate the practice. The term was coined by Professor Curtis Bradley, who defined foreign relations exceptionalism generally as the practice of distinguish[ing] sharply between domestic and foreign affairs.
²³ The simplicity of this definition obscures the diversity of ways in which the term has been interpreted and applied. Some of the differences in application are based on attempts to create subcategories of exceptionalism. Thus, some scholars have suggested there are stronger and milder versions of exceptionalism;²⁴ others have argued there are national security exceptionalists and internationalist exceptionalists.²⁵ Conflict also persists with regard to consistency. Some claim that exceptionalists have been inconsistent in their exceptionalism;²⁶ others claim that nonexceptionalists have been inconsistent in their non-exceptionalism.²⁷
Putting aside the obvious boundary problem in defining foreign,
²⁸ the central analytic problem with the common definition of exceptionalism is that it does not distinguish between those differences that emerge from standard analysis, such as constitutional text and original history (which we call formalist
), and those differences that are based instead on distinctive functional, doctrinal, or methodological analysis.²⁹ Scholars sometimes criticize exceptionalism on both formalist and functional grounds;³⁰ and other times, they distinguish between formal and functional grounds.³¹ We therefore define foreign relations exceptionalism to mean that domestic and foreign affairs–related issues are analyzed in distinct ways as a matter of function, doctrine, or methodology. Excluded from this definition are distinctions between foreign and domestic powers that result from generally applicable formalist analysis based on, for example, constitutional text and original history. The President is the Commander in Chief, a power that has particular significance in foreign relations. The treatymaking process is different from the process of passing legislation. This is not exceptionalism.
We exclude these kinds of distinctions because we think they fail to isolate what the term foreign relations exceptionalism
attempts to measure. The purpose of the term is not just to state that foreign and domestic affairs are legally distinct in particular ways, but also to evaluate whether those differences are appropriate. The term itself sets a baseline of generally applicable analysis (that is why foreign affairs can be exceptional
) and seeks to identify places where the analysis of foreign affairs diverges from this baseline. If generally applicable analysis of text and original history allocates foreign affairs powers in particular ways, that allocation is still at the baseline.³² Assuming an exclusively domestic affairs baseline when evaluating text and original history would embed an objection to foreign affairs divergences from the start. This would make it very difficult to evaluate the appropriateness of treating foreign affairs differently because it conflates debates about the text and original history with debates about functional, doctrinal, or methodological concerns. The claim that the federal government must speak with one voice,
for example, is based on both constitutional text, which is not exceptionalism, and the unique needs of the federal government as co-equal sovereign in relation to other countries, which is exceptionalism. We are concerned with untangling these arguments and focusing on the latter. Doing so is particularly important because, as we describe in Part III, many of these functional arguments cannot be justified, yet they have been embraced at times by the Court and by an important body of scholarship.³³
Functional arguments can lead to exceptionalism in doctrine and methodology. Sometimes exceptionalism appears with the application of facially neutral doctrine in distinctive ways in foreign relations cases.³⁴ The political question doctrine, for example, is framed in neutral terms but has been applied to bar many foreign relations claims because those claims are said to pose unique risks. The doctrine itself is not exceptionalist, but the claim that the doctrine should be differently applied in foreign relations is. The purportedly distinctive functional features of foreign relations can also lead to differences in methodology. Some have argued, for example, that historical practice may play an especially important role in foreign relations because it is a form of deference to the political branches, which reflects limitations on the judiciary’s expertise and access to information, limitations that are thought to be especially acute in the area of foreign affairs.
³⁵ Of course, historical practice can play an important role in domestic constitutional interpretation, too.³⁶ But when the functional foreign relations arguments are used to justify greater reliance on historical practice in a foreign affairs case, as opposed to a domestic affairs case, that is exceptionalism in action.
In attempting to isolate (and ultimately criticize, in Part III) functional, doctrinal, and methodological exceptionalism, we do not mean to argue that there are never any differences between the foreign and