Any thoughts on whether it would require a special ActofCongress to authorize President Obama'saccepting the NobelPeace Prize?

[Volokh, Eugene]

               That, I take it, is the question:  Is a gift from a committee appointed by a foreign Parliament coming from a "foreign State"?  How do we figure that out?

From: conlawprof-bounces at lists.ucla.edu [mailto:conlawprof-bounces at lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Mark Tushnet
Sent: Friday, October 09, 2009 5:30 PM
To: Janet Alexander; conlawprof at lists.ucla.edu
Subject: RE: Any thoughts on whether it would require a special ActofCongress to authorize President Obama'saccepting the NobelPeace Prize?


I've been in transit as this thread developed.  Seth Tillman's questions provoked me to do some checking.  Alfred Nobel's will says that the Peace Prize will be awarded by a committee of the Norwegian Parliament.  As far as I can tell, what happens is that the Norwegian Parliament (or some committee thereof) nominates members of the prize committee.  But, again as far as I can tell, the committee isn't a committee "of" the parliament in the sense we in the U.S. would think -- though maybe, as Seth asks, it might be so under Norwegian law.  The current members of the committee are described on its web site in the following (summary) terms, and it looks to me as if only two of the five members are currently members of the parliament (though I could be wrong -- I heard a report that two of them were members until just before the announcement this morning, and two of the members on the web-site are indeed described as members "since 2009," which is consistent with appointment this morning; as it happens, or maybe not merely by chance, these two are the two who are currently members of parliament):  Chair -- president of the parliament; self-employed advisor public affairs (and parliament member 1981-97, which pretty strongly suggests that she isn't a member now); no current employment described, but member of parliament 1977-93; senior political advisor to the Progress Party's parliamentary group and MP 1989-93; member of parliament.  So, I wonder whether the prize even qualifies as coming "from any King, Prince, or foreign State."

Mark Tushnet
William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law
Harvard Law School
Areeda 223
Cambridge, MA  02138

ph:  617-496-4451 (office); 202-374-9571 (mobile)



-----Original Message-----
From: conlawprof-bounces at lists.ucla.edu on behalf of Janet Alexander
Sent: Fri 10/9/2009 6:28 PM
To: conlawprof at lists.ucla.edu
Subject: RE: Any thoughts on whether it would require a special ActofCongress to authorize President Obama'saccepting   the     NobelPeace      Prize?

I assume he won't take the money, but the Constitution doesn't say
anything about a title of Nobelity.

At 02:15 PM 10/9/2009, David Wagner wrote:
>Content-Language: en-US
>Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
>
>boundary="_000_9E91EB883EE7A74B858C746499FBD596127D8630F0MAIL1CCRregen_"
>
>Does anyone have standing to sue if a gov't (state of fed) creates a
>title of nobility?
>
>

_______________________________________________
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 --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ucla.edu/pipermail/conlawprof/attachments/20091009/cc5e36fd/attachment.htm>