Robertson's urging the government to assassinate Chavez

[Janet Alexander]

Perhaps I'm obtuse.  I thought that one big point about our form of 
constitutional government was that those who run the government must obey 
the law.  This is also one of the (current) justifications for waging a war 
to replace the former government of Iraq with a constitutional government, 
because governments that follow this rule are thought to be safer for their 
neighbors.  We are party to international treaties that generally rule out 
assassinating heads of state or waging war without certain legal 
justifications.

If the president were to authorize the CIA to assassinate the elected 
president of Venezuela, one of our treaty partners as well as a member of 
the UN and a country that has engaged in no acts of war against us, I think 
that would violate the constitutional principle of a government of 
laws.  (Yes, we've done it before, and look at the trouble it's always 
gotten us into.)   I imagine there may be disagreement among list members 
as to whether such an act would in fact be constitutional.

The forest/trees point is that I was surprised to see the list focus on the 
relatively, to me, non-controversial issue of whether the statement was 
protected under the First Amendment and related questions like whether he 
spoke as a preacher or a politician. The constitutional question whether 
the president/CIA can legally assassinate a foreign head of state, not 
acting in self defense, as we have done and tried to do in the past, 
occurred more readily to me watching the foreign news coverage.  The 
non-constitutional, foreign policy point is, what are people in other 
countries thinking when they see this happening -- believing Robertson is 
more influential than he really is, remembering that the Bush 
administration was quick to give diplomatic recognition to the abortive 
coup against Chavez, and noting Bush administration talk and actions 
regarding overthrowing governments they don't like -- and can this be good 
for US legitimacy in "spreading constitutionalism"?

Even if one believes that my point is one of domestic statutory or 
international law rather than constitutional law, I think it's in the same 
general area as Sandy Levinson's position about the importance of the 
formation of the Iraqi constitution to constitutional law and at least as 
relevant as some other comments in the thread.

         Janet Alexander


At 11:09 AM 8/27/2005 -0400, RJLipkin at aol.com wrote:
>In a message dated 8/27/2005 10:27:58 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
>jca at stanford.edu writes:
>In other words, this list's focus on the words' legality under the 1st 
>Amendment (which to me seems clear), vague statements that Chavez might be 
>"a bad guy," and parsing comparisons to Salman Rushdie in my view miss the 
>big constitutional point.  In other western democracies this was big news 
>because a strong ally of the US president, perceived as more mainstream 
>than he is because he ran for president, advocated that the US government 
>assassinate a democratically elected head of state and the US president 
>was not repudiating the suggestion.
>         Not to be intentionally obtuse, and with all due respect, what is 
> "the big constitutional point"? [Emphasis added]
>
>Bobby
>
>Robert Justin Lipkin
>Professor of Law
>Widener University School of Law
>Delaware

Janet Cooper Alexander
Frederick I. Richman Professor of Law
Stanford Law School
Stanford CA 94301-8610
650.723.2892
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