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Federalism, State Cooperation and Compliance with International Commitments

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Institutionalisation beyond the Nation State

Part of the book series: Studies in European Economic Law and Regulation ((SEELR,volume 10))

Abstract

Both in the EU and in the US, foreign affairs are complicated by the fact that power is divided vertically between the Union and the States. In the US, these complications arise from the fact that the States’ cooperation is often required to ensure the United States’ compliance with its international commitments, yet under US constitutional law the States are not required to cooperate. Moreover, Congress in principle cannot create private remedies against the States, either in federal or in State court. This stands in stark contrast to the situation under EU law. Despite the impact on the effectiveness of the treaties into which it enters, the US has nonetheless sought to safeguard the traditional federal balance even though it arguably has the power to ignore federalism when acting internationally.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The term comes from Stein (1983), p. 27. It is a more generic term that avoids qualifying the EU as a federal system—which it obviously is.

  2. 2.

    See the Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution and Article 5(2) TEU, respectively.

  3. 3.

    United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995).

  4. 4.

    Article 165(4) TFEU.

  5. 5.

    Young (2014), p. 34 at 38.

  6. 6.

    King v. Burwell, 576 U.S. ____ (2015); National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, 567 U.S. 1 (2012).

  7. 7.

    Exec. Order No. 1376882 Fed. Reg. 8799 (Jan. 25, 2017). See Chacón (2017), p. 243.

  8. 8.

    On the Walloon saga and the complexities of so-called ‘incomplete mixity’, see Van der Loo and Wessel (2017), p. 735.

  9. 9.

    Wouters et al. (2015), p. 45 at 64–65. See generally Hoffmeister (2007), p. 41.

  10. 10.

    De Baere (2012), p. 640. Sometimes Member States’ resistance is directed at more symbolic trappings of external sovereignty. See Wouters et al. (2015), pp. 49–50 (mentioning inter alia UK resistance to the use of EU nameplates when delivering common statements in the FAO).

  11. 11.

    Articles 3(2) and 216 TFEU. These provisions codify the doctrine established in the ERTA judgment (Commission v Council (‘ERTA’), 22/70, EU:C:1971:32).

  12. 12.

    See Judgment in Commission v. Greece (‘IMO’), C-45/07, EU:C:2009:81.

  13. 13.

    Judgment in Commission v. Council (‘FAO’), C-25/94, EU:C:1996:114.

  14. 14.

    Judgment in Commission v. Sweden (‘PFOS’), C-246/07, EU:C:2010:203. The first time that the Court mentioned the duty to cooperate was in Opinion 1/94, WTO Agreement, EU:C:1994:384, para. 109. That duty was arguably also of a substantive nature: in the context of the WTO agreements, Member States may have to take retaliating measures in an area that belongs to their retained powers when the Union cannot retaliate effectively by taking measures in its own sphere of competence. However, see Kuijper (1995), p. 49 at 59–60, who explains that things are not that simple in practice.

  15. 15.

    Either as a result of the pre-emptive effect of internal legislative action under the ERTA doctrine or as a consequence of Treaty amendments.

  16. 16.

    Eeckhout (2015), ch. 10.

  17. 17.

    Opinion 2/15, EU-Singapore Free Trade Agreement, EU:C:2017:376.

  18. 18.

    Golove and Hulsebosch (2010), p. 101.

  19. 19.

    Article I, §10, clause 3.

  20. 20.

    Article I, §8, cl. 11–14. See also Article I, §10, cl. 3 and Article II, §2, cl. 1.

  21. 21.

    Article I, §8, cl. 1.

  22. 22.

    See also Article I, §8, cl. 2–5 and 10.

  23. 23.

    Article II, §2. See further Henkin (1996), p. 177.

  24. 24.

    The same question arose under Congress’ Taxing and Spending Powers (Article I, §8). See United States v. Butler, 297 U. S. 1 at 65. (1936).

  25. 25.

    252 U.S. 416 (1920).

  26. 26.

    Id., 433–434.

  27. 27.

    Though note Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1 (1957) (international agreements must comply with the (other) restraints imposed by the Constitution, in particular the Bill of Rights).

  28. 28.

    However, with the adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment (1913), the two Senators that each State has are no longer elected by the State legislatures but by the people thereof. Consequently, the Senate arguably no longer protects the interests of the States as States, like it did under original design. See Schleicher (2014), p. 1043.

  29. 29.

    See Hathaway (2008), p. 1236.

  30. 30.

    Henkin (1996), pp. 215 et seq.

  31. 31.

    United States v. Belmont, 301 U.S. 324 at 330 (1937).

  32. 32.

    See generally Glennon and Sloane (2016).

  33. 33.

    Henkin (1996), p. 150.

  34. 34.

    Involving the States in that process may originally have been the idea behind the Treaty Power’s insistence that the Senate give both advice and consent to treaties made by the President. However, neither the President nor the Senate found the idea of the latter advising the former throughout the treaty-making process practical, resorting instead to deliberate and pass judgment later. Henkin (1996), p. 177.

  35. 35.

    See Vazquez (1995), p. 695.

  36. 36.

    See infra, note 61.

  37. 37.

    Mikos (2009), p. 1421.

  38. 38.

    Article 4(3) TEU. See generally Klamert (2014).

  39. 39.

    Article 216(2) TFEU.

  40. 40.

    Judgment in Van Gend & Loos, 26/62, EU:C:1963:1 at p. 13.

  41. 41.

    New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144 (1992). This must be read strictly—the prohibition does not cover situations in which Congress subjects state governments to ‘generally applicable’ laws, that is, to the same legislation applicable to private parties (Id. at 160). The Court in New York v. United States made it very clear that the anti-commandeering doctrine does not speak to whether Congress could (for instance) subject state employers such as schools and hospitals to the Fair Labor Standards Act, like it had other employers.

  42. 42.

    Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997).

  43. 43.

    Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, 451 U.S. 1, 17 (1981).

  44. 44.

    Stewart Machine Co. v. Davis, 301 U.S. 548 at 590 (1937); South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203 at 211 (1987).

  45. 45.

    Printz moreover suggests that federal commandeering will not be prohibited where it is authorised by the Constitution itself, for instance when implementing the Extradition Clause (521 U.S. 898, 908–909). See Carter (2001), p. 598 at 624.

  46. 46.

    The literature on the Eleventh Amendment is vast. See e.g. Pfander (1998), p. 1269; Marshall (1989), p. 1372; Jackson (2000), p. 953; Clark (2010), p. 1817.

  47. 47.

    However, the sovereign immunity of the states ‘neither derives from, nor is limited by, the terms of the Eleventh Amendment’. Alden v. Maine, 527 U.S. 706 at 713 (1999).

  48. 48.

    Alden v. Maine, 527 U.S. 706 at 713–715 (1999).

  49. 49.

    Seminole Tribe v. Florida, 517 U.S 44, 47, 59–66 (1996). See Weinberg (2001), p. 1113 at 1124 et seq.

  50. 50.

    Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U.S. 445 (1976). However, the Court has interpreted that congressional power restrictively. See Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Education Expense Board v. College Savings Bank, 527 U.S. 627 (1999), Kimel v. Florida Board of Regents, 528 U.S. 62 (2000), and Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama v. Garrett, 531 U.S. 356 (2001), all striking down statutes as exceeding Congress’ power to abrogate state sovereign immunity pursuant to Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment.

  51. 51.

    Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U.S. 445 at 453–454 (1976), referring to Ex parte Virginia, 100 U. S. 339 (1880). But see Weinberg (2001), pp. 1113 at 1148–1149.

  52. 52.

    Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123 (1908). Building on this decision’s finding that suits against State officials are not suits against the State, Congress has created (in 42 U.S.C. §1983) a general cause of action for violations of federal law under colour of State law by State officials.

  53. 53.

    Fallon et al. (2009), pp. 922 et seq.

  54. 54.

    See Weinberg (2001); Currie (1997), p. 547; Jackson (1997), p. 495; Thomas (1998), p. 1068.

  55. 55.

    See inter alia Vázquez (1999), p. 1317; Swaine (2003), p. 403; Bradley (1998), p. 390; Carter (2001), p. 598; Ku (2004), p. 457.

  56. 56.

    Golove (2000), p. 1075.

  57. 57.

    252 U.S. 416 at 432 (1920).

  58. 58.

    Vázquez (2002), pp. 726 et seq.

  59. 59.

    Id. at 728–729.

  60. 60.

    Id. at 730–731.

  61. 61.

    Id. at 732.

  62. 62.

    Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 at 919 (1997).

  63. 63.

    Swaine (2003), pp. 482–483. See New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144 at 168–169 (1992).

  64. 64.

    New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144 at 169 (2002).

  65. 65.

    Carter (2001), p. 614; Swaine (2003), p. 484.

  66. 66.

    Hathaway (2008), p. 1236.

  67. 67.

    Ku (2008), p. 1063 at 1068–1069.

  68. 68.

    Swaine (2003), p. 420.

  69. 69.

    Nash (2016), pp. 50 et seq.

  70. 70.

    Id. at 58.

  71. 71.

    See Klabbers (2002), pp. 174–177.

  72. 72.

    Bergman (2000), p. 415 at 423; Tallberg (2003), p. 26.

  73. 73.

    Scelle (1943), pp. 190 et seq. See earlier Scelle (1932). See also Cassese (1990), p. 210, in particular at 231 (arguing that Scelle’s ideas have explanatory potential in the EU context).

  74. 74.

    Swaine (2003), p. 432.

  75. 75.

    See further Flaherty (1999), p. 1277; Ku (2006), 2380; Halberstam (2001), p. 1015.

  76. 76.

    See generally Yoo and Ku (2012).

  77. 77.

    Cf. United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598 (2000) (declaring unconstitutional on federalism grounds the part of the 1994 Violence Against Women Act that provided a private civil remedy in federal court to victims of gender-motivated violence).

  78. 78.

    The Hague Convention of 23 November 2007 on the International Recovery of Child Support and Other Forms of Family Maintenance, UNTS No. I-51361, 47 ILM (2008) 257.

  79. 79.

    The Vienna Convention of 22 April 1963 on Consular Relations, 596 UNTS 261.

  80. 80.

    See already in 1995, with regard to human rights treaties, Henkin (1995), p. 341.

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  1. Institute for European Law, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Timothy Roes

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    Elaine Fahey

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Roes, T. (2018). Federalism, State Cooperation and Compliance with International Commitments. In: Fahey, E. (eds) Institutionalisation beyond the Nation State. Studies in European Economic Law and Regulation, vol 10. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50221-2_14

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