Robertson's urging the government to assassinate Chavez

[Bob Sheridan]

The points made are anything but obtuse.  It takes a bit of back and 
forth, however, to focus on various issues as they develop over time 
among various discussants.

We started with whether Robertson, who was publicly calling for murder, 
was protected by Brandenburg; then it was pointed out that he may not 
have been exhorting private followers but public officials, which got us 
into whether he had a right to advocate under Brandenburg that 
government commit murder, in this case of a foreign head of state with 
whom we were not at war.  This led to whether the president had the 
power to order the death of a foreign head of state, etc., and what 
legal effect if he did. Then there was the question of what 
international sanctions came into play.  So the issues developed over 
time. 

Coming in after the fact, and after having observed the reaction on the 
news in Europe provided a different perspective that may have made ours 
seem to miss a larger point, but to me this illustrates a facet of 
thinking about Con-Law:  Few people get it all in the first shot or 
go-around.  It takes time, effort, and thought to think through, over, 
around, and past various interplaying ideas and no one has a monopoly on 
it all, certainly not on the first go-'round.  That's what makes this 
listserve so useful; there's almost always another take.

rs


Janet Alexander wrote:

> 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
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>To post, send message to Conlawprof at lists.ucla.edu
>To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/conlawprof
>
>Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private.  Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: bobsheridan.vcf
Type: text/x-vcard
Size: 73 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/private/conlawprof/attachments/20050827/d9b8fc8a/bobsheridan.vcf