Constitutional Diplomacy

Challenging those who accept or advocate executive supremacy in American
foreign-policy making, Constitutional Diplomacy proposes that we
abandon the supine roles often assigned our legislative and judicial
branches in that field. This book, by the former Legal Counsel to the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is the first comprehensive
analysis of foreign policy and constitutionalism to appear in over
fifteen years. In the interval since the last major work on this theme
was published, the War Powers Resolution has ignited a heated
controversy, several major treaties have aroused passionate
disagreement over the Senate's role, intelligence abuses have been
revealed and remedial legislation debated, and the Iran-Contra affair
has highlighted anew the extent of disagreement over first principles.
Exploring the implications of these and earlier foreign policy
disputes, Michael Glennon maintains that the objectives of diplomacy
cannot be successfully pursued by discarding constitutional interests.
Glennon probes in detail the important foreign-policy responsibilities
given to Congress by the Constitution and the duty given to the courts
of resolving disputes between Congress and the President concerning
the power to make foreign policy. He reviews the scope of the prime
tools of diplomacy, the war power and the treaty power, and examines
the concept of national security. Throughout the work he considers the
intricate weave of two legal systems: American constitutional
principles and the international law norms that are part of the U.S.
domestic legal system.