The Dynamic Incorporation of Foreign Law and the Constitutional Regulation of Federal Lawmaking
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THE DYNAMIC INCORPORATION OF FOREIGN LAW AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL REGULATION OF FEDERAL LAWMAKING PAUL J. LARKIN, JR.* INTRODUCTION ............................................................ 338 I. THE LACEY ACT AND THE INCORPORATION OF FOREIGN LAW .................................................. 347 II. THE FEDERAL LAWMAKING PROCESS .................. 354 A. The Vesting of Legislative Authority in Congress: The Article I Bicameralism and Presentment Clauses ............................. 354 B. The Delegation of Legislative Authority to the Executive Branch: The Article II Appointments Clause ................................... 358 1. “Static” vs. “Dynamic” Delegation ...... 359 2. Delegating Federal Lawmaking Authority to Federal Agencies .............. 361 a. The Conventional Theory ............... 361 b. Two Unconventional Theories ....... 366 c. The Common Denominator ............ 369 3. Delegating Federal Lawmaking Authority to State Officers ..................... 372 III. THE CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUES RAISED BY THE LACEY ACT’S DELEGATION OF FEDERAL LAWMAKING AUTHORITY .................... 377 A. Article I Problems With the Lacey Act ....... 379 * Senior Legal Research Fellow, The Heritage Foundation; M.P.P., George Wash- ington University, 2010; J.D., Stanford Law School, 1980; B.A., Washington & Lee University, 1977. This article is an expanded version of the author’s 2013 testimo- ny before Congress. See infra note 28. The views expressed in this Article are the author’s own and should not be construed as representing any official position of The Heritage Foundation. I want to thank Albert W. Alschuler, Tom Buchanan, Paul Cassell, Thomas DiBiagio, C. Jarrett Dieterle, Andrew Kloster, and Joseph Luppino-Esposito for offering valuable comments on an earlier draft. Any remain- ing errors are mine. 338 Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy [Vol. 38 1. The “Intelligible Principle” Requirement ............................................ 379 a. Laws Imposing Criminal Liability Must Be Readily Available to the Public .................................................. 381 b. Laws Imposing Criminal Liability Must Be Written in English ............. 387 c. Laws Imposing Criminal Liability Must Be Readily Understandable by the Average Person ..................... 388 d. Laws Imposing Criminal Liability Must Be Fixed and Precise .............. 390 2. The “Private Nondelegation Doctrine” . 401 a. The Supreme Court’s Early Private Nondelegation Doctrine Decisions: Eubank, Thomas Cusack, Roberge, Schechter Poultry, and Carter Coal ..... 403 b. The Supreme Court’s Later Private Nondelegation Doctrine Decisions: Currin, Rock Royal Coop., New Motor Vehicle Board, and Midkiff ................. 408 c. The Private Nondelegation Doctrine Today ................................ 409 3. The Role of Due Process as “the Law of the Land” ............................ 411 4. The Relevance of “the Law of the Land” to the Lacey Act ....................................... 423 B. Article II Problems With the Lacey Act ...... 431 IV. A POTENTIAL NECESSITY DEFENSE ...................... 434 V. CONCLUSION ......................................................... 435 INTRODUCTION The Constitution of the United States establishes an interrelat- ed system of national and state governments, each with its own separate authority that partially complements and partially overlaps the powers lodged in the other. The Constitution as- sumes that states have their own independent legal sovereignty No. 1] Dynamic Incorporation of Foreign Law 339 drawn from their own constitutions and possess a general “po- lice power” denied to the federal government.1 The Constitution creates the national government and grants it exclusive authori- ty to regulate some areas of responsibility, such as foreign af- fairs.2 In cases of a conflict between state and federal law, the default rule is that the latter will supplant the former.3 The result is that the Framers left the states and their regulatory authority in place except insofar as necessary to enable the new federal government to protect and regulate the nation as a whole and to prevent the type of destructive interstate economic warfare that had characterized government under the Articles of Confedera- tion.4 Yet, rather than always act as competitors, the federal and state governments have entered into a variety of cooperative en- deavors, such as the different national social insurance programs that have existed since the New Deal.5 “The great innovation of this design was that ‘our citizens would have two political capacities, one state and one feder- al, each protected from incursion by the other’—’a legal sys- tem unprecedented in form and design, establishing two or- ders of government, each with its own direct relationship, its 1. See U.S. CONST. amend. X (“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respec- tively, or to the people.”); Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11, 25 (1905) (noting that each state possesses “the police power—a power which the State did not sur- render when becoming a member of the Union under the Constitution,” which in- cludes “such reasonable regulations established directly by legislative enactment as will protect the public health and the public safety”); Sturges v. Crowninshield, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 122, 192–93 (1819); compare License Cases, 46 U.S. (5 How.) 504, 523– 25 (1847) (the states possess a general police power), with NFIB v. Sebelius, 132 S. Ct. 2566, 2577–78 (2012) (the federal government does not). 2. See U.S. CONST. art. I, § 10, cl. 1 (“No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alli- ance, or Confederation”). 3. See U.S. CONST. art. VI, cl. 2 (“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”). 4. See Kidd v. Pearson, 128 U.S. 1, 21 (1888); THE FEDERALIST No. 7, at 60–61 (Alex- ander Hamilton) (Clinton Rossiter ed., 1961). 5. See Harold J. Krent, Fragmenting the Unitary Executive: Congressional Delegations of Administrative Authority Outside the Federal Government, 85 NW. U. L. REV. 62, 80–82 & nn.55–58 (1990) (collecting examples of joint federal-state programs, such as Medicaid). 340 Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy [Vol. 38 own privity, its own set of mutual rights and obligations to the people who sustain it and are governed by it.’”6 Foreign governments play no role in that scheme. Just as no state grants another the right to intervene in its domestic poli- tics, nations do not cede sovereignty to each other. The pro- spect that the United States would grant a foreign government the legal authority to govern the people of this nation is absurd. It certainly would seem bizarre to most Americans to suggest that the world’s oldest surviving representative democracy should give to a foreign country the bedrock right that our an- cestors, families, and friends have purchased with blood, treasure, and honor for more than two centuries. History clear- ly looks askance on that possibility. The Declaration of Inde- pendence denounced King George III for “subject[ing] us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our Laws,” and for “taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Government.”7 The Colonists fought the American Revolution to overthrow foreign rule and to win the freedom to govern themselves.8 The Framers gathered in Philadelphia to form a national government for “ourselves and our Posterity.”9 The very first words in the Constitution declare that “We the People of the United States” adopted that document as the charter for that national government.10 The ordinary meaning of the term “republic” is a system of government in which the members of a polity rule themselves through elected represent- 6. Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898, 920 (1997) (quoting U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779, 838 (1995) (Kennedy, J., concurring)). 7. See THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE paras. 15, 23 (U.S. 1776). 8. See BRUCE ACKERMAN, WE THE PEOPLE: FOUNDATIONS (1993) (arguing that the actions of the nation’s founding generation established principles that help interpret the nature of our polity). 9. See Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz, An American Amendment, 32 HARV. J.L. & PUB. POL’Y 475, 477–78 (2009) (“[F]oreign control over American law was a primary grievance of the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration’s most resonant pro- test was that King George had ‘subject[ed] us to a jurisdiction foreign to our consti- tution.’”) (footnote omitted). 10. See U.S. CONST. pmbl. (“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”). No. 1] Dynamic Incorporation of Foreign Law 341 atives.11 The Framers called this system “a Republican Form of Government.”12 Indeed, it is fair to say that the average mem- ber of the public likely would find the scenario of foreign rule utterly preposterous.13 Yet, Congress has enacted several