Running Roughshod
Over U.S. Laws
Under NAFTA and the SPP, the rule of law — including our U.S.
Constitution and Bill of Rights — is being replaced with arbitrary
rule by unaccountable elitists.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
By William F. Jasper
Rule of law? President Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox at 2004 Summit of the Americas meeting in
Monterrey, Mexico. Bush declares his devotion to “the rule of law.”
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ITEM:“NAFTA court is law of the 3 lands.” So proclaimed the headline in the Sacramento Bee on April 18, 2004. The
article, taken from the New York Times, reports on a NAFTA tribunal overriding the Massachusetts Supreme Court and the
U.S. Supreme Court.
ITEM: “State Laws Take Back Seat to Trade.” That was the headline of a Los Angeles Times story for December 5, 2004 on how rulings by courts created under NAFTA and the World Trade Organization are striking down state laws.
ITEM: “Mexican Trucks Begin Deliveries Beyond U.S. Border.” The September 9, 2007 Bloomberg.com story reported
on the controversial move by the Bush administration to advance NAFTA objectives by opening the United States to
long-haul Mexican trucking companies, in violation of state safety, labor, and environmental laws.
The rule of law, the great principle underlying our constitutional system of government, is under attack as never before. Two of the prominent threats to the rule of law in America are the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the 2005Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). President Bush is an ardent champion of the former and a coauthor of the latter.
Nevertheless, the president regularly invokes the “rule of law” in his speeches and press conferences. As he did, for instance, at the January 2004 Summit of the Americas in Monterrey, Mexico. Standing next to his host, Mexico’s then-President Vicente Fox, Mr. Bush said of the illegal- immigration controversy: “We are a country of law. Rule of law is important in America.”
This is perversely ironic, in that NAFTA and the SPP are daggers aimed at the very heart of the rule of law. However, before examining
these threats, it might serve to examine briefly just what that three-word phrase, “rule of law,” so reverenced in American heritage, actually means.
Our Founding Fathers believed that the primary function of government is to protect the inalienable, Godgiven
rights of the individual. Thus they devised a constitutional republic in which the powers of the national government were “few and defined,” as well as clearly separated into the three spheres of operation (legislative, executive, and judicial) and loaded with checks and balances to guard against arbitrariness, encroachment, and usurpation. Thomas Jefferson warned his fellow citizens to keep tyranny in check by binding government officials down “by the chains of the Constitution.” John Adams, in drafting the Constitutionfor the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,
gave us the famous phrase, “a government
of laws and not of men.”
The NAFTA judiciary has “been under the radar screen,” says Peter Spiro, a law professor at Hofstra
University, “but it points to a fundamental reorientation of our constitutional system. You have an
international tribunal essentially reviewing American court judgments.”
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However, under the subversive processes
established by NAFTA, the SPP,
and other so-called free-trade agreements,
the limitations on government are rapidly
being destroyed. This became strikingly
obvious when a NAFTA tribunal struck
down U.S. state laws and court rulings in
the case reported in the New York Times/
Sacramento Bee article cited at the top
of this story. John D. Echeverria, a law
professor at Georgetown University, said
that the NAFTA judiciary represents “the
biggest threat to United States judicial independence.”
Peter Spiro, a law professor
at Hofstra University, likewise noted: “It’s
basically been under the radar screen. But
it points to a fundamental reorientation of
our constitutional system. You have an international
tribunal essentially reviewing
American court judgments.”
However, adverse court rulings are
not the only (or even principal) means by
which NAFTA and the SPP threaten our
constitutional rule of law.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice with David
Rockefeller, founder and honorary chairman of the
Council of the Americas, one of the principal private
groups promoting a North American Union.
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A fundamental principle of constitutional
law is that a law passed by
Congress, or a treaty ratified by the
Senate, that violates the Constitution
is null and void. Though approved
by Congress in 1993, many features
of NAFTA, including the jurisdiction
of NAFTA tribunals, should be
declared unconstitutional. NAFTA
also established dozens of secret
tri-national working groups that develop
“norms” and “rules” to govern
all activities under NAFTA’s alleged
jurisdiction. This unconstitutional
legislative process has been carried
over into the SPP, which, unlike
NAFTA, was never even put before
Congress. President Bush simply
launched it in 2005 as an executive
measure.
The SPP working groups are a
developing legion of public officials
and private citizens who are secretly
crafting policies and rules on matters
ranging from education, taxes,
immigration, and customs, to transportation,
banking, and law enforcement. These
“official” SPP working groups collaborate
with privileged private organizations
such as the Council on Foreign Relations
(CFR), the North American Forum, the
North American Competitiveness Council,
and the Council of the Americas.
The CFR’s main spokesman promoting
the SPP, is Professor Robert Pastor, who
favors merging the United States, Canada,
and Mexico into a North American Community
with a common border European
Union-style. He also supports deep “integration”
that would subject to tri-national
jurisdiction many matters that our Constitution
says can only be decided by the
United States government, state and local
governments, or the American people.
Dr. Pastor has been a key participant at
SPP meetings that have been closed to the
American people and their constitutionally
elected representatives. One of Pastor’s influential
SPP allies in this transformation
of America from the rule of law to the rule
of men is Princeton University law professor
Anne-Marie Slaughter, the CFR’s leading
exponent of “transgovernmentalism,”
the growing trend of regional and global
governance by networks of private-public
actors independent of the nation state.
Ms. Slaughter’s 1997 essay, “The Real
New World Order,” for the CFR journal
Foreign Affairs, presents the case for governance
by network and outlines precisely
what has been taking place under NAFTA
and the SPP. Slaughter enthusiastically
notes that informal networks of judges,
diplomats, technocrats, and business executives
are circumventing national sovereignty
and creating “a form of global
governance” by performing “many of the
functions of a world government — legislation,
administration, and adjudication …
without the form.” She praises transgovernmentalism
for being “fast, flexible, and
effective.” No need for those slow, messy,
constitutional checks and balances!
It is precisely individuals like Pastor
and Slaughter — and their fellow globalists
inside of and outside of government
— whom Jefferson admonished that we
should bind down “from mischief by the
chains of the Constitution.”
William F. Jasper joined the staff of The John Birch Society in 1976 as a researcher and soon became a contributing editor to the Society's magazines, American Opinion and The Review of the News. When those publications merged in 1985 to become THE NEW AMERICAN, Mr. Jasper continued to serve as a writer and contributing editor until 1990, when he was promoted to the position of Senior Editor.
Over the past three decades, William Jasper has researched and written extensively on foreign and domestic politics, national security, education, immigration, constitutional issues, the culture war, and most notably, the United Nations. His renown as an investigative journalist and insightful analyst on a wide array of topics has made William Jasper a frequent and highly sought guest on many radio and television programs.
He is the author of the 2001 book, The United Nations Exposed and the 1992 book, Global Tyranny-Step by Step: The United Nations and the Emerging New World Order. Both books were praised by many as the most authoritative and detailed expose' of the UN ever written. Mr. Jasper's coverage of UN events has included attendance at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the UN 50th Anniversary Founding celebration in San Francisco, the July 1998 UN Summit on the International Criminal Court in Rome, and the UN Millennium Summit in New York City during September 2000.
Born in Madison, Wisconsin, William Jasper grew up in the Pacific Northwest and is a graduate of the University of Idaho. Mr. Jasper receives critical support from his wife Carmen and their two sons.
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