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LOST Neg
BR Lab
BR Lab LOST Neg
LOST NEG
1
TRADE
3
LOST DOESN’T SOLVE TRADE
4
ECONOMY DEFENSE
5
TRADE DEFENSE
7
TERRITORIAL DISPUTES
9
LOST NO SOLVENCY
10
TERRITORIAL DISPUTES DEFENSE
12
OVERFISHING ADV
14
INTERNAL LINK D
15
FISH WARS DEFENSE
17
ARCTIC ADD-ON
18
ARCTIC WAR D
19
CEA CP
21
1NC CEA CP
22
A2: PERM DO THE CP
23
CP SOLVENCY- MARITIME AGREEMENTS
24
CP SOLVENCY- GENERAL
26
A2: YOO ARTICLE 1 POWERS
27
CP SOLVENCY- SOLVES BETTER
28
CP SOLVENCY- DURABILITY
31
CP SOLVENCY- DURABILITY
32
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A2: RATIFICATION KEY
35
A2: NOT CONSTITUTIONAL
36
CP- DEMOCRACY NB
38
DEMOCRACY NB 2NC LINK EXTENSION
39
2NC POLITICS NB
40
POLITICS LINKS
41
1NC LINK
42
2NC LINK WALL
43
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Trade
3
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LOST Neg
BR Lab
LOST Doesn’t Solve Trade
LOST not key to trade
Bandow 2004 (senior fellow at the Cato Institute, specializing in foreign policy and civil
liberties) http://www.cato.org/publications/congressional-testimony/law-sea-treatyinconsistent-american-interests
Moreover, any LOST
legal protections offer little by way of real practical gain. Few nations are likely
to interfere with commercial shipping because they have far more to gain economically from
allowing unrestricted passage. Where countries perceive their vital national interests to be at
stake — Great Britain in World War I and Iran and Iraq during their war throughout the 1980s — they are not likely to
allow juridical niceties to stop them from interdicting or destroying international commerce. Even
unambiguous rights under international law did not protect American vessels and aircraft when North Korea seized the USS Pueblo
and China held the EP-3 surveillance plane. Most coastal
nations will make policy based on perceived
national interest more than abstract legal norms. Indeed, LOST membership has not prevented
Brazil, China, India, Malaysia, North Korea, Pakistan, and others from making ocean claims
deemed excessive by some. In testimony last October Adm. Mullen warned that the benefits he believed
to derive from treaty ratification did not “suggest that countries’ attempts to restrict navigation
will cease once the United States becomes a party to the Law of the Sea Convention.” As for military
transit, with or without the LOST, America needs to concentrate on maintaining good relations with the handful of strategicallyplaced countries. The prowess of the U.S. Navy, not the LOST, will remain the ultimate guarantor of America’s ability to roam the
seas. Of course, even with friendly states Washington would prefer not “to have to use muscle to exercise our rights,” observed
former LOST negotiator Elliot Richardson. But the
treaty is likely to matter only where countries have neither
the incentive nor the ability to interfere with U.S. shipping. Moreover, in a world in which the U.S.S.R. has
disappeared, the Red Navy is rusting in port, China has yet to develop a blue water navy, and Third World conflicts no longer
threaten America through their connection to the Cold War, Washington is rarely going to have to send its fleet where it is not
wanted.
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Economy Defense
Econ collapse doesn’t cause war – prefer our studies
Samuel Bazzi (Department of Economics at University of California San Diego) and Christopher Blattman (assistant
professor of political science and economics at Yale University) November 2011 “Economic Shocks and Conflict: The (Absence of?)
Evidence from Commodity Prices”
http://www.chrisblattman.com/documents/research/2011.EconomicShocksAndConflict.pdf?9d7bd4
VI. Discussion and conclusions A. Implications for our theories of political instability and conflict The state is not a prize?—Warlord
politics and the state prize logic lie at the center of the most influential models of conflict, state development, and political
transitions in economics and political science. Yet we
see no evidence for this idea in economic shocks, even
when looking at the friendliest cases: fragile and unconstrained states dominated by extractive
commodity revenues. Indeed, we see the opposite correlation: if anything, higher rents from
commodity prices weakly 22 lower the risk and length of conflict. Perhaps shocks are the wrong test. Stocks
of resources could matter more than price shocks (especially if shocks are transitory). But combined with emerging evidence that
war onset is no more likely even with rapid increases in known oil reserves (Humphreys 2005; Cotet and Tsui 2010) we regard the
state prize logic of war with skepticism.17 Our
main political economy models may need a new engine.
Naturally, an absence of evidence cannot be taken for evidence of absence. Many of our conflict onset and ending results include sizeable positive and negative effects.18 Even
so, commodity price shocks are highly influential in income and should provide a rich source of identifiable variation in instability. It is difficult to find a better-measured, more
Moreover, other time-varying variables, like rainfall and
foreign aid, exhibit robust correlations with conflict in spite of suffering similar empirical
drawbacks and generally smaller sample sizes (Miguel et al. 2004; Nielsen et al. 2011). Thus we take the
absence of evidence seriously. Do resource revenues drive state capacity?—State prize models assume that rising revenues raise the value of the
abundant, and plausibly exogenous independent variable than price volatility .
capturing the state, but have ignored or downplayed the effect of revenues on self-defense. We saw that a growing empirical political science literature takes just such a
revenue-centered approach, illustrating that resource boom times permit both payoffs and repression, and that stocks of lootable or extractive resources can bring political
order and stability. This countervailing effect is most likely with transitory shocks, as current revenues are affected while long term value is not. Our findings are partly consistent
with this state capacity effect. For example, conflict intensity is most sensitive to changes in the extractive commodities rather than the annual agricultural crops that affect
household incomes more directly. The relationship only holds for conflict intensity, however, and is somewhat fragile. We do not see a large, consistent or robust decline in
conflict or coup risk when prices fall. A reasonable interpretation is that the state prize and state capacity effects are either small or tend to cancel one another out. Opportunity
cost: Victory by default?—Finally, the inverse relationship between prices and war intensity is consistent with opportunity cost accounts, but not exclusively so. As we noted
above, the relationship between intensity and extractive commodity prices is more consistent with the state capacity view. Moreover, we shouldn’t mistake an inverse relation
between individual aggression and incomes as evidence for the opportunity cost mechanism. The same correlation is consistent with psychological theories of stress and
aggression (Berkowitz 1993) and sociological and political theories of relative deprivation and anomie (Merton 1938; Gurr 1971). Microempirical work will be needed to
Ultimately, however, the fact that commodity price shocks have
no discernible effect on new conflict onsets, but some effect on ongoing conflict, suggests that political
stability might be less sensitive to income or temporary shocks than generally believed. One possibility is
distinguish between these mechanisms. Other reasons for a null result.—
that successfully mounting an insurgency is no easy task. It comes with considerable risk, costs, and coordination challenges. Another possibility is that the counterfactual is still
If a nation is so fragile that a change in
prices could lead to war, then other shocks may trigger war even in the absence of a price shock.
conflict onset. In poor and fragile nations, income shocks of one type or another are ubiquitous.
The same argument has been made in debunking the myth that price shocks led to fiscal collapse and low growth in developing nations in the 1980s.19 B. A general problem of
these findings should heighten our concern with publication bias in the
conflict literature. Our results run against a number of published results on commodity shocks and
conflict, mainly because of select samples, misspecification, and sensitivity to model
assumptions, and, most importantly, alternative measures of instability. Across the social and hard sciences, there is
a concern that the majority of published research findings are false (e.g. Gerber et al. 2001). Ioannidis (2005) demonstrates that a published finding is less
likely to be true when there is a greater number and lesser pre-selection of tested relationships;
there is greater flexibility in designs, definitions, outcomes, and models; and when more teams
are involved in the chase of statistical significance. The cross-national study of conflict is an
extreme case of all these. Most worryingly, almost no paper looks at alternative dependent variables
or publishes systematic robustness checks. Hegre and Sambanis (2006) have shown that the majority of published conflict results are fragile,
publication bias? More generally,
though they focus on timeinvariant regressors and not the time-varying shocks that have grown in popularity. We are also concerned there is a “file drawer problem” (Rosenthal
1979). Consider this decision rule: scholars that discover robust results that fit a theoretical intuition pursue the results; but if results are not robust the scholar (or referees)
worry about problems with the data or empirical strategy, and identify additional work to be done. If further analysis produces a robust result, it is published. If not, back to the
the consequences are dire: a lower threshold of evidence for initially significant
results than ambiguous ones.20
file drawer. In the aggregate,
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Economic collapse doesn’t cause war – no causal connection
Thomas P.M. Barnett (senior managing director of Enterra Solutions LLC and a contributing
editor/online columnist for Esquire magazine) August 2009 “The New Rules: Security Remains Stable Amid Financial
Crisis” http://www.aprodex.com/the-new-rules--security-remains-stable-amid-financial-crisis-398-bl.aspx
When the global financial crisis struck roughly a year ago, the blogosphere was ablaze with all sorts of
scary predictions of, and commentary regarding, ensuing conflict and wars -- a rerun of the Great Depression
leading to world war, as it were. Now, as global economic news brightens and recovery -- surprisingly led by China and emerging
markets -- is the talk of the day, it's interesting to look back over the past year and realize how globalization's
first truly
worldwide recession has had virtually no impact whatsoever on the international security
landscape. None of the more than three-dozen ongoing conflicts listed by GlobalSecurity.org can be
clearly attributed to the global recession. Indeed, the last new entry (civil conflict between Hamas and Fatah in the
Palestine) predates the economic crisis by a year, and three quarters of the chronic struggles began in the last century. Ditto for the
15 low-intensity conflicts listed by Wikipedia (where the latest entry is the Mexican "drug war" begun in 2006). Certainly, the RussiaGeorgia conflict last August was specifically timed, but by most accounts the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics was the
most important external trigger (followed by the U.S. presidential campaign) for that sudden spike in an almost two-decade long
struggle between Georgia and its two breakaway regions. Looking over
the various databases, then, we see a
most familiar picture: the usual mix of civil conflicts, insurgencies, and liberation-themed
terrorist movements. Besides the recent Russia-Georgia dust-up, the only two potential state-on-state wars (North v. South
Korea, Israel v. Iran) are both tied to one side acquiring a nuclear weapon capacity -- a process wholly unrelated to
global economic trends. And with the United States effectively tied down by its two ongoing major interventions (Iraq and
Afghanistan-bleeding-into-Pakistan), our involvement elsewhere around the planet has been quite modest, both leading up to and
following the onset of the economic crisis: e.g., the usual counter-drug efforts in Latin America, the usual military exercises with
allies across Asia, mixing it up with pirates off Somalia's coast). Everywhere
else we find serious instability we
pretty much let it burn, occasionally pressing the Chinese -- unsuccessfully -- to do something. Our new Africa Command, for
example, hasn't led us to anything beyond advising and training local forces. So, to sum up: * No significant uptick in
mass violence or unrest (remember the smattering of urban riots last year in places like Greece, Moldova and Latvia?); *
The usual frequency maintained in civil conflicts (in all the usual places); * Not a single state-onstate war directly caused (and no great-power-on-great-power crises even triggered); * No great
improvement or disruption in great-power cooperation regarding the emergence of new nuclear powers (despite all
that diplomacy); * A modest scaling back of international policing efforts by the system's acknowledged Leviathan power (inevitable
given the strain); and *
No serious efforts by any rising great power to challenge that Leviathan or
supplant its role. (The worst things we can cite are Moscow's occasional deployments of strategic assets to the Western hemisphere and its weak efforts to outbid
the United States on basing rights in Kyrgyzstan; but the best include China and India stepping up their aid and investments in Afghanistan and Iraq.) Sure, we've finally seen
global defense spending surpass the previous world record set in the late 1980s, but even that's likely to wane given the stress on public budgets created by all this
unprecedented "stimulus" spending. If anything, the friendly cooperation on such stimulus packaging was the most notable great-power dynamic caused by the crisis. Can we
say that the world has suffered a distinct shift to political radicalism as a result of the economic crisis? Indeed, no. The world's major economies remain governed by center-left
or center-right political factions that remain decidedly friendly to both markets and trade. In the short run, there were attempts across the board to insulate economies from
immediate damage (in effect, as much protectionism as allowed under current trade rules), but
there was no great slide into "trade wars."
Instead, the World Trade Organization is functioning as it was designed to function, and regional efforts toward free-trade agreements have not slowed. Can we say Islamic
radicalism was inflamed by the economic crisis? If it was, that shift was clearly overwhelmed by the Islamic world's growing disenchantment with the brutality displayed by
violent extremist groups such as al-Qaida. And looking forward, austere economic times are just as likely to breed connecting evangelicalism as disconnecting fundamentalism.
At the end of the day, the economic crisis did not prove to be sufficiently frightening to provoke
major economies into establishing global regulatory schemes, even as it has sparked a spirited -- and much needed, as I
argued last week -- discussion of the continuing viability of the U.S. dollar as the world's primary reserve currency. Naturally,
plenty of experts and pundits have attached great significance to this debate, seeing in it the beginning of
"economic warfare" and the like between "fading" America and "rising" China. And yet, in a world of globally
integrated production chains and interconnected financial markets, such "diverging interests"
hardly constitute signposts for wars up ahead. Frankly, I don't welcome a world in which America's fiscal profligacy goes undisciplined, so
bring it on -- please! Add it all up and it's fair to say that this global financial crisis has proven the great resilience of America's post-World War II international liberal trade order.
Do I expect to read any analyses along those lines in the blogosphere any time soon? Absolutely not. I expect the fantastic fear-mongering to proceed apace. That's what the
Internet is for.
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Trade Defense
No protectionism
Dani Rodrik (professor of political economy at Harvard, recipient of the Social Science Research
Council’s Hirschman Prize) 2009 “The myth of rising protectionism”, http://www.businessstandard.com/india/news/dani-rodrikmythrising-protectionism/373102/
There was a dog that didn’t bark during the financial crisis: protectionism. Despite much hue and cry
about it, governments have, in fact, imposed remarkably few trade barriers on imports. Indeed, the world economy remains as open
as it was before the crisis struck. Protectionism normally thrives in times of economic peril. Confronted by
economic decline and rising unemployment, governments are much more likely to pay attention to domestic pressure groups than
to upholding their international obligations. As John Maynard Keynes recognised, trade restrictions can protect or generate
employment during economic recessions. But what may be desirable under extreme conditions for a single country can be highly
detrimental to the world economy. When everyone raises trade barriers, the volume of trade collapses. No one wins. That is why the
disastrous free-for-all in trade policy during the 1930’s greatly aggravated the Great Depression. Many complain that something
similar, if less grand in scope, is taking place today. An outfit called the Global Trade Alert (GTA) has been at the forefront, raising
alarm bells about what it calls “a protectionist juggernaut”. The GTA’s latest report identifies no fewer than 192 separate
protectionist actions since November 2008, with China as the most common target. This number has been widely quoted in the
financial press. Taken at face value, it seems to suggest that governments have all but abandoned their commitments to the World
Trade Organization and the multilateral trade regime. But look more closely
at those numbers and you will find
much less cause for alarm. Few of those 192 measures are, in fact, more than a nuisance. The most common among
them are the indirect (and often unintended) consequences of the bailouts that governments mounted as a
consequence of the crisis. The most frequently affected sector is the financial industry. Moreover, we do not even know whether
these numbers are unusually high when compared to pre-crisis trends. The GTA report tells us how many measures have been
imposed since November 2008, but says nothing about the analogous numbers prior to that date. In the absence of a benchmark for
comparative assessment, we do not really know whether 192 “protectionist” measures is a big or small number. What about the
recent tariffs imposed by the United States on Chinese tires? President Barack Obama’s decision to introduce steep duties (set at 35
per cent in the first year) in response to a US International Trade Commission (USITC) ruling (sought by US labour unions) has been
widely criticised as stoking the protectionist fires. But it is easy to overstate the significance of this case, too. The
tariff is fully consistent with a special arrangement negotiated at the time of China’s accession to the WTO, which allows the US to
impose temporary protection when its markets are “disrupted” by Chinese exports. The tariffs that Obama imposed were
considerably below what the USITC had recommended. And, in any case, the measure affects less than 0.3 per cent of China’s
exports to the US. The
reality is that the international trade regime has passed its greatest test since
the Great Depression with flying colours. Trade economists who complain about minor instances
of protectionism sound like a child whining about a damaged toy in the wake of an earthquake
that killed thousands. Three things explain this remarkable resilience: ideas, politics and institutions.
Economists have been extraordinarily successful in conveying their message to policymakers—even if
ordinary people still regard imports with considerable suspicion. Nothing reflects this better than how “protection” and
“protectionists” have become terms of derision. After all, governments are generally expected to provide protection to their citizens.
But if
you say that you favour protection “from imports”, you are painted into a corner with Reed
Smoot and Willis C. Hawley, authors of the infamous 1930 US tariff bill. But economists’ ideas would not have gone very far
without significant changes in the underlying configuration of political interests in favour of open trade. For every worker
and firm affected by import competition, there is one or more worker and firm expecting to
reap the benefits of access to markets abroad. The latter have become increasingly vocal and powerful, often
represented by large multinational corporations. In his latest book, Paul Blustein recounts how a former Indian trade minister once
asked his American counterpart to bring him a picture of an American farmer: “I have never actually seen one,” the minister
quipped. “I have only seen US conglomerates masquerading as farmers.” But the relative docility of rank-and-file workers on trade
issues must ultimately be attributed to something else altogether: the safety nets erected by the welfare state. Modern
industrial societies now have a wide array of social protections – unemployment compensation, adjustment
assistance, and other labour-market tools, as well as health insurance and family support — that mitigate demand for
cruder forms of protection.
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Their historical examples are exactly why trade won’t collapse
Daniel Ikenson (director of Cato's Center for Trade Policy Studies) 2009 “A protectionism fling”,
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10651
A Little Perspective, Please Although
some governments will dabble in some degree of protectionism, the
combination of a sturdy rules-based system of trade and the economic self interest in being open to
participation in the global economy will limit the risk of a protectionist pandemic. According to recent estimates from the
International Food Policy Research Institute, if all WTO members were to raise all of their applied tariffs to the
maximum bound rates, the average global rate of duty would double and the value of global trade would decline
by 7.7 percent over five years.8 That would be a substantial decline relative to the 5.5 percent annual rate of trade growth
experienced this decade.9 But, to put that 7.7 percent decline in historical perspective, the value of global trade declined by 66
percent between 1929 and 1934, a period mostly in the wake of Smoot Hawley's passage in 1930.10 So the
potential
downside today from what Bergsten calls "legal protectionism" is actually not that "massive," even if all WTO members
raised all of their tariffs to the highest permissible rates. If most developing countries raised their tariffs to their bound rates, there
would be an adverse impact on the countries that raise barriers and on their most important trade partners.
But most developing countries that have room to backslide (i.e., not China) are not major importers, and thus the impact on global
trade flows would not be that significant. OECD countries and China account for the top twothirds of global import value.11
Backsliding from India, Indonesia, and Argentina (who collectively account for 2.4 percent of global imports) is not going to
be the spark that ignites a global trade war. Nevertheless, governments are keenly aware of the
events that transpired in the 1930s, and have made various pledges to avoid protectionist measures in
combating the current economic situation. In the United States, after President Obama publicly registered his concern
that the "Buy American" provision in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act might be perceived as
protectionist or could incite a trade war, Congress agreed to revise the legislation to stipulate that the Buy American provision
"be applied in a manner consistent with United States obligations under international agreements." In early February, China's vice
commerce minister, Jiang Zengwei, announced that China would not include "Buy China" provisions in its own $586 billion stimulus
bill.12 But even more promising than pledges to avoid trade provocations are actions taken to reduce existing trade barriers. In an
effort to "reduce business operating costs, attract and retain foreign investment, raise business productivity, and provide consumers
a greater variety and better quality of goods and services at competitive prices," the Mexican government initiated a plan in January
to unilaterally reduce tariffs on about 70 percent of the items on its tariff schedule. Those 8,000 items, comprising 20 different
industrial sectors, accounted for about half of all Mexican import value in 2007. When the final phase of the plan is implemented on
January 1, 2013, the average industrial tariff rate in Mexico will have fallen from 10.4 percent to 4.3 percent.13 And Mexico is not
alone. In February, the Brazilian government suspended tariffs entirely on some capital goods imports and reduced to 2 percent
duties on a wide variety of machinery and other capital equipment, and on communications and information technology products.14
That decision came on the heels of late-January decision in Brazil to scrap plans for an import licensing program that would have
affected 60 percent of the county's imports.15 Meanwhile, on February 27, a new free trade agreement was signed between
Australia, New Zealand, and the 10 member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to reduce and ultimately
eliminate tariffs on 96 percent of all goods by 2020. While
the media and members of the trade policy
community fixate on how various protectionist measures around the world might foreshadow a
plunge into the abyss, there is plenty of evidence that governments remain interested in
removing barriers to trade. Despite the occasional temptation to indulge discredited policies,
there is a growing body of institutional knowledge that when people are free to engage in
commerce with one another as they choose, regardless of the nationality or location of the other parties, they
can leverage that freedom to accomplish economic outcomes far more impressive than when governments
attempt to limit choices through policy constraints.
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Territorial Disputes
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LOST No Solvency
UNCLOS does not have the jurisdiction to settle South China Sea dispute
Business Standard 2014 (News Source) http://www.business-standard.com/article/ptistories/unclos-cannot-determine-south-china-sea-dispute-china-114060201484_1.html
Rejecting the claims of Vietnam and other maritime neighbors over the South China Sea, China
today said it has
indisputable sovereignty over the area for over 2000 years and the UN Convention on the Law of
the Sea (UNCLOS) cannot be applicable to it. Facing flak from the US, Japan and others over its
arrestee maritime policy in the contested waters, Deputy Chief of the People's Liberation Army
(PLA) Wang Guanzhong said China historically had sovereignty over the South China Sea. He was
addressing the last day of the annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. Though China is a signatory of the United
Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and fully respects it, the 1982 treaty cannot be
retrospectively applicable to China which had controlled the area for over 2000 years, state-run
CCTV reported. His comments come in the backdrop of Vietnam threatening to take the South China Sea dispute to international
arbitration under the UNCLOS. Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei along with Taiwan strongly contest China's claims over the
South China Sea. US has said it backs their demand for settlement of the dispute without taking a position on the claims and
counter- claims. "The
UNCLOS is not suited to determining the ownership of islands and reefs.
Maritime law is a vast and rich legal system that includes more than just the United Nations
Convention", Wang said.
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UNCLOS increases disputes- ensures arguments where its unclear
Stephen C. Nemeth and Sara McLaughlin . August 11, 2007. Mitchell Department of Political
Science @ Iowa . UNCLOS and the Management of Maritime Conflictsnghiencuubiendong.vn/.../163unclos-and-the-management-of-maritime-conflicts.html
While UNCLOS provided the first wide-ranging agreement on the distribution of the resources
of the sea, its design characteristics do not adequately address distributional problems nor do
they allow for the creation of credible commitments among the allocating parties. The creation of
clear boundaries is an important design feature of successful institutions because it determines who can and cannot use the
While UNCLOS
popularized the concept of EEZs, the boundaries themselves are not clear, nor are the
boundaries adequate for the resource unit. Particular boundary problems result from the
creation of straight baselines for states with uneven coasts, the definition of continental shelf,
the EEZ implications of islands, and the issue of straddling fish stocks (Pratt and Schofield, 2000).9 This
uncertainty merely exaggerates the distributional problem by encouraging exploitative
behaviors (Wijkman, 1982), thus undermining an allocator’s ability to make a credible commitment
to responsible resource use. The uncertainty of these borders can also become a point of
conflict between states (c.f. Hodgson and Smith, 1979). For example, one of the most significant disagreements over
resources and allows only those tasked with maintaining the resource to allocate them (Ostrom, 1990: 91).
maritime boundaries involve the potentially oil rich Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. China, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines
and Brunei all claim part of the disputed, and mostly uninhabited islands. Specifically, baselines refer to the “low water line along the
coast as marked on large-scale charts officially recognized by the coastal state” (Pratt and Schofield, 2000:5). Straight baselines
allow for a state with jagged coastlines or “fringes of islands” to draw straight lines connecting two points of its coast to prevent
situations where pockets of non-territorial seas are surrounded by expanses of territorial sea. This, however, leads to a variety of
Debates
over the continental shelf have occurred because, in some areas, the shelf extends beyond the
EEZ. In addition, states’ rights over the continental shelf need not be expressed publicly (Pratt and
Schofield, 2000: 7). Islands have been an issue in UNCLOS because islands incapable of supporting
“human habitation or economic life” cannot be used for the creation of EEZs (Pratt and Schofield, 8).
This has led to controversy among states and has been exacerbated by the lack of guidance as to
what constitutes an ability to support human habitation or economic life. While straddling stocks have
definitional questions regarding what constitutes a jagged coastline or “fringes of islands” (Pratt and Schofield, 2000:5).
been addressed in subsequent agreements, the inability of EEZs to reflect their movements have led to defensive measures on the
part of states whose EEZs the fish migrate from and exploitative behaviors from consuming states (Bailey 1996). Uninhabited,
islands. China and Vietnam appear to have the greatest claim over the islands, based on their historical actions, yet the latter states
The Spratly Islands disputes
illustrate clearly the difficulties of establishing clear maritime boundaries.
have the advantages of proximity and international law (Charney, 1995: 728-729).
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Territorial Disputes Defense
China threat is exaggerated – don’t pose a challenge
Ross 2009 (Robert S. Ross, Professor of Political Science at Boston College and Associate of the John
King Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University, September 2009 “Myth The Great
Debate” http://nationalinterest.org/greatdebate/dragons/myth-3819)
Yet China
does not pose a threat to America's vital security interests today, tomorrow or at any time in
the near future. Neither alarm nor exaggerated assessments of contemporary China's relative
capabilities and the impact of Chinese defense modernization on U.S. security interests in East Asia is needed because,
despite China's military advances, it has not developed the necessary technologies to constitute a grave threat.
Beijing's strategic advances do not require a major change in Washington's defense or regional security policy, or in U.S. policy
toward China. Rather, ongoing American confidence in its capabilities and in the strength of its regional partnerships allows the
United States to enjoy both extensive military and diplomatic cooperation with China while it consolidates its regional security
interests. The
China threat is simply vastly overrated.
Chinese military tech developments wont threaten the US – they are alarmist
exaggerations and they underestimate US military adaptation
Ross 2009 (Robert S. Ross, Professor of Political Science at Boston College and Associate of the John
King Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University, September 2009 “Myth The Great
Debate” http://nationalinterest.org/greatdebate/dragons/myth-3819)
Thus, the argument
that China is on the verge of developing and deploying a transformative
asymmetric force rests on unrealistic worst-case estimates that do not reflect the limits of current
Chinese capabilities; the intrinsic difficulty of designing and producing high-technology, experimental
weapons systems; and the vulnerability of an ASBM system to U.S. countermeasures. China's ASBM program is
not a "silver bullet" that will magically transform the U.S. deterrent posture in the region or undermine American alliances.
Moreover, U.S. maritime war-fighting capability is not limited to its surface fleet, and it would be foolish to underestimate the vast
array of systems the United States has at its disposal. U.S. nuclear-powered guided-missile submarines (SSGNs) contain 154 westernPacific-based Tomahawk cruise missiles that can target critical Chinese assets and penetrate Chinese coastal waters with minimal
fear of detection. U.S. SSGNs provide the United States with a powerful sea-based retaliatory capability and a persuasive and
credible deterrent. Should
China make progress on its ASBM force, the United States can deploy
additional counterattack and offensive weaponry on subsurface platforms, thereby negating any new
Chinese capabilities. Beijing’s progress on its other high-technology programs is equally unsure and does not threaten U.S. security.
China is making advances in its satellite program, which can contribute to its ability to target U.S. ships. But alarmists
exaggerate China's capabilities and underestimate U.S. superiority in space technologies and U.S.
ability to degrade Chinese satellite capabilities. China's antisatellite program is also developing, but its limited
targeting capability and American redundancy in satellites minimize China's ability to destroy America's satellite communications
systems.
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China wont be able to challenge the US navy
Ross 2009 (Robert S. Ross, Professor of Political Science at Boston College and Associate of the John
King Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University, September 2009 “Myth The Great
Debate” http://nationalinterest.org/greatdebate/dragons/myth-3819)
China’s naval nationalism and its development of an aircraft carrier will have distinct strategic and political implications for the U.S.China relationship, with consequences for U.S. management of China’s naval program, as well as for U.S.-China diplomatic relations.
China’s Naval Ambitions and U.S. Maritime Security China’s
naval buildup will not pose a challenge to U.S.
maritime security. The construction of a carrier, other ships in the strike force, and their onboard equipment and
technologies will all strain China’s defense budget, especially given the multiple other missions assigned to the PLA.
Within the PLA there has been substantial resistance to construction of a carrier both from the army and from navy submariners,
who advocate continued focus on the access-denial strategy. Within
PLA academic institutions, the aircraft
carrier has become so controversial that it can no longer be openly discussed in informal
conversations.101
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Overfishing Adv
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Internal Link D
LOST isn’t enough
Roppolo 2014 (Michael Roppolo, June 26, 2014, “Five-year rescue plan to save the world's oceans,”
CBS, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/five-year-rescue-plan-to-save-the-worlds-oceans/)
The health of the world's oceans are in decline and a five-year rescue plan must be implemented
by governments around the world in order to prevent more damage, according to a report released on Wednesday.¶ Over the past
18 months, the Global Ocean Commission has been studying and analyzing data on the greatest threats to the seas. Loss of habitats
and biodiversity, overfishing and an increase in need for natural resources have led to what a summary of the report describes as a
"degraded, underproductive and exploited ocean."¶ The report proposed creating a sustainable development goal for the global
oceans to help ensure sustainable fishing; protect vulnerable marine areas; reduce biodiversity loss; fight illegal, unreported and
unregulated fishing; and reduce plastic debris entering the environment by 50 percent. Progress on these proposals would be
monitored by an independent Global Ocean Accountability Board.¶ The
authors note that the 1982 U.N.
Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) has been largely ignored. The high seas, once thought to be
protected by its inaccessibility, can now be easily reached for oil drilling, industrial fishing vessels and
deep sea mineral extraction. Countries are often not able to take action against those who
violate the convention due to the so-called "rule of freedom," which forbids any interference
with ships flying a foreign flag except in limited circumstances.¶ The commission calls the
UNCLOS agreement outdated and ineffective, and proposes a new agreement to strengthen conservation efforts.
It also suggests the U.N. create a post for a Special Representative for the Ocean, and that governments around the world appoint
ocean ministers.
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Status quo LOST enforcement is sufficient
BNN 2014 (Big News Network, “Ban urges recommitment to landmark treaty governing use of world's
oceans,” Big New Network, http://www.bignewsnetwork.com/index.php/sid/222753743)
9 June 2014 150 Marking
the upcoming 20th anniversary of the entry into force of the landmark
treaty that has become known as the "Constitution for the Oceans", Secretary-General Ban Kimoon today encouraged Member States to recommit to the United Nations Convention on the
Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) at what he considers a crucial moment for climate change.¶ "People
everywhere continue to look to the oceans for food security and as a source of jobs, prosperity and well-being," Mr. Ban said in his
remarks to the meeting of State parties to the UNCLOS, which runs through Friday at the Headquarters in New York.¶ "Oceans and
seas can play a critical role in the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals and in the post-2015 development agenda," he
continued, referencing the anti-poverty targets whose approaching 2015 deadline has led to discussions on a new set of sustainable
development goals.¶ Among its provisions, UNCLOS
established that the seabed and the ocean floor beyond
the limits of national jurisdiction are the "common heritage of mankind" whose use and
protection are the right and responsibility of all.¶ The Convention, which came into force on 16 November
1994, governs all aspects of ocean space " including the delimitation of maritime boundaries,
exploitation of living and non-living resources, protection and preservation of the marine
environment, marine scientific research and the settlement of relevant international disputes.¶
It has contributed to setting up the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, the
International Seabed Authority and the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf.¶ The
maritime accord also provides the basis for the equitable utilization, protection and
preservation or resources in the oceans and seas.¶ The livelihoods of 12 per cent of the world"s
population depend on the fishing sector. On average, 17 per cent of global animal protein intake comes from
fisheries and aquaculture, and demand for fish protein is expected to double in the next 20 years, the UN Food and Agricultural
Organization (FAO) has reported, yet some 28 per cent of global stocks are already overfished.¶ "We
must address the
many pressures facing the oceans as a result of overfishing, acidification, land-based activities
and, above all, climate change," he said, echoing his message for World Oceans Day, marked on
8 June and which this year underscored the power of collaboration to keep oceans and seas
clean and healthy.¶ Mr. Ban will host a summit in September to further highlight the importance
of climate change and sustainable development, and general momentum towards a universal
UN-backed treaty on climate change by 2015 which would enter into force by 2020.¶ Ahead of this
summit, and in line with the UN General Assembly"s declaration of 2014 as the International Year of Small Island Developing States,
the Third International Conference on Small Island Developing States will be held in early September in Apia, Samoa, to focus on
partnerships for sustainable development those nations.
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Fish Wars Defense
No conflict over resources – your literature base overfocuses on instances of
conflict – for every example to prove resource wars exist there are several
examples that disprove it. Their research is based on dated data – cooperation
is more likely
Simon Dalby (Dept. Of Geography, Carleton University) 2006 "Security and environment linkages
revisited" in Globalisation and Environmental Challenges: Reconceptualising Security in the 21st Century,
www.ntu.edu.sg/idss/publications/SSIS/SSIS001.pdf)
In parallel with the focus on human security as a necessity in the face of both natural and artificial forms of vulnerability, recent
literature has emphasised the opportunities that environmental management presents for
political cooperation between states and other political actors, on both largescale infrastructure projects as well as more
traditional matters of wildlife and new concerns with biodiversity preservation (Matthew/Halle/Switzer 2002). Simultaneously, the
discussion on water wars, and in
particular the key finding the shared resources frequently stimulate
cooperation rather than conflict, shifted focus from conflict to the possibilities of environmental
action as a mode of peacemaking. Both at the international level in terms of environmental
diplomacy and institution building, there is considerable evidence of cooperative action on the part of
many states (Conca/Dabelko 2002). Case studies from many parts of the world suggest that cooperation
and diplomatic arrangements can facilitate peaceful responses to the environmental difficulties
in contrast to the pessimism of the 1990’s where the focus was on the potential for conflicts. One
recent example of the attempts to resolve difficulties in the case of Lake Victoria suggests a dramatic alternative to the resource war
scenarios. The need to curtail over-fishing in the lake and the importance of remediation has encouraged cooperation; scarcities
leading to conflict arguments have not been common in the region, and they have not influenced policy prescriptions
(Canter/Ndegwa 2002). Many conflicts over the allocations of water use rights continue around the world but most of them are
within states and international disputes simply do not have a history of leading to wars.
Your lit base is rigged to come to the conclusion that scarcity leads to conflict –
prefer our evidence
David G. Victor, Adjunct Senior Fellow for Science and Technology professor of law at Stanford Law
School and the director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development. He is also a senior fellow
at the Council on Foreign Relations 1-2-08 Smoke and Mirrors The National Interest.
Nearly all of the vast literature that Homer-Dixon applauds suffers from the affliction of severe selection bias and failure to assign
proper weights to causal factors. Put
a microscope on any big conflict looking for resources, and you’re
sure to find exactly what you’re looking for. Nobody doubts that causation is complex; the dispute is on the
central forces. And to Klare’s point about methodology, my article focuses narrowly on hot conflict—that is, “war”—because the
best way to get causation right usually requires starting narrowly. However, technological change
and economic
shifts away from resource-intensive industries and the globalization of most resources into
commodities implies that a broader version of my hypothesis probably also holds—natural
resources matter less and thus are less important for conflict, except where lootable resources
coincide with exceptionally poor governance.
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Arctic Add-On
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Arctic War D
No opportunity and coop solves – prefer experts
Young (Oran R Young, Professor – Institutional and International Governance, Environmental
Institutions @ UCSB, Arctic expert, PhD – Yale, 2011 “The future of the Arctic: cauldron of conflict or
zone of peace?” International Affairs 87:1, p. 185-193)
Popular accounts of the Arctic’s jurisdictional issues are regularly couched in terms of provocative
phrases like the afore-mentioned ‘who owns the Arctic’ or ‘use it or lose it’. But these phrases turn out
to be highly misleading in this context. There are virtually no disputes in the Arctic regarding
sovereignty over northern lands; no one has expressed a desire to redraw the map of the Arctic
with regard to the terrestrial boundaries of the Arctic states. Most of the disagreements are to do
with jurisdiction over marine areas where the idea of ownership in the ordinary sense is irrelevant.
While some of these disagreements are of long standing and feature relatively entrenched positions,
they are not about establishing ownership, and they do not indicate that some level of ‘use’ is
required to avoid the erosion of sovereignty. There is little prospect that these disputes will spawn
armed clashes. As both Michael Byers and Shelagh Grant make clear in their excellent analyses of
Arctic sovereignty, recent efforts to address matters involving sovereignty in the Arctic are marked
by a spirit of rule-based problem-solving, rather than an escalating spiral of politically charged
claims and counterclaims. The process of delineating jurisdictional boundaries regarding the seabed
beyond the limits of Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) is taking place in conformity with the rules and
procedures set forth in Article 76 of UNCLOS. Norway and Russia have signed an international treaty
resolving their differences regarding jurisdictional boundaries in the Barents Sea. There are signs that
Canada and the United States are interested in a similar approach with regard to the Beaufort Sea.
The Russians, whose much ballyhooed 2007 initiative to plant the Russian flag on the seabed at the
North Pole is widely discussed in the books under review, have acted in conformity with the relevant
rules of international law in addressing jurisdictional matters and repeatedly expressed their readiness
to move forward in a cooperative manner in this realm. There are, of course, significant sensitivities
regarding the legal status of the Northern Sea Route and especially the Northwest Passage. But given
that commercial traffic on these routes is likely to be limited during the near future, and that the use
of these routes will require the active cooperation of the coastal states, regardless of their formal
legal status, opportunities arise for devising pragmatic arrangements governing the use of these
waterways. The progress now being made regarding the development of a mandatory Polar Code
covering Arctic shipping is good news. The fact that ‘hot spots’ in the search for oil and gas in the
Arctic are located, for the most part, in areas that are not subject to jurisdictional disputes is also
helpful. Overall, it seems fair to conclude that the Arctic states are living up to their promises to deal
with jurisdictional issues in the region in a peaceful manner.
No arctic conflict
Dyer 2012 (Gwynne Dyer, OC is a London-based independent Canadian journalist, syndicated columnist and military
historian., His articles are published in 45 countries, 8/4/2012, "Race for Arctic Mostly Rhetoric",
www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/columnists/race-for-arctic-mostly-rhetoric-164986566.html)
Russian television contacted me last night asking me to go on a program about the
race for Arctic resources. The ice is
melting fast, and it was all the usual stuff about how there will be big strategic conflicts over the
seabed resources -- especially oil and gas -- that become accessible when it's gone. The media
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always love conflict, and now that the Cold War is long gone, there's no other potential military
confrontation between the great powers to worry about. Governments around the Arctic Ocean
are beefing up their armed forces for the coming struggle, so where are the flashpoints and what
are the strategies? It's great fun to speculate about possible wars. In the end I didn't do the interview because the Skype
didn't work, so I didn't get the chance to rain on their parade. But here's what I would said to the Russians if my
server hadn't gone down at the wrong time. First, you should never ask the barber if you need a haircut. The armed forces
in every country are always looking for reasons to worry about impending conflict, because
that's the only reason their governments will spend money on them. Sometimes they will be right to worry,
and sometimes they will be wrong, but right or wrong, they will predict conflict. Like the barbers, it's in their professional interest to
say you need their services. So you'd
be better off to ask somebody who doesn't have a stake in the
game. As I don't own a single warship, I'm practically ideal for the job. And I don't think there will
be any significant role for the armed forces in the Arctic, although there is certainly going to be a
huge investment in exploiting the region's resources. There are three separate "resources" in the Arctic. On the
surface, there are the sea lanes that are opening up to commercial traffic along the northern coasts of Russia and Canada. Under the
seabed, there are potential oil and gas deposits that can be drilled once the ice retreats. And in the water in between, there is the
planet's last unfished ocean. The sea lanes are mainly a Canadian obsession, because the government believes the Northwest
Passage that weaves between Canada's Arctic islands will become a major commercial artery when the ice is gone. Practically every
summer, Prime Minister Stephen Harper travels north to declare his determination to defend Canada's Arctic sovereignty from -well, it's not clear from exactly whom, but it's a great photo op. Canada
is getting new Arctic patrol vessels and
building a deep-water naval port and Arctic warfare training centre in the region, but it's all
much ado about nothing. The Arctic Ocean will increasingly be used as a shortcut between the
North Atlantic and the North Pacific, but the shipping will not go through Canadian waters. Russia's
"Northern Sea Route" will get the traffic, because it's already open and much safer to navigate. Then there's the
hydrocarbon deposits under the Arctic seabed, which the U.S. Geological Survey has forecast may contain
almost one-fourth of the world's remaining oil and gas resources. But from a military point of
view, there's only a problem if there is some disagreement about the seabed boundaries. There
are only four areas where the boundaries are disputed. Two are between Canada and its eastern
and western neighbours in Alaska and Greenland, but there is zero likelihood of a war between Canada
and the United States or Denmark (which is responsible for Greenland's defence). In the Bering Strait, there is
a treaty defining the seabed boundary between the United States and Russia, signed in the dying days
of the Soviet Union, but the Russian Duma has refused to ratify it. The legal uncertainty caused by the
dispute, however, is more likely to deter future investment in drilling there than lead to war. And
then there was the seabed-boundary dispute between Norway and Russia in the Barents Sea, which
led Norway to double the size of its navy over the past decade. But last year, the two countries
signed an agreement dividing the disputed area right down the middle and providing for joint
exploitation of its resources. So no war between NATO (of which Norway is a member) and the Russian
Federation. Which leaves the fish, and it's hard to have a war over fish. The danger is rather that the
world's fishing fleets will crowd in and clean the fish out, as they are currently doing in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica. If
the countries with Arctic coastlines want to preserve this resource, they can only do so by creating an
international body to regulate the fishing. And they will have to let other countries fish there, too, with agreed catch limits, since
they are mostly international waters. They
will be driven to co-operate, in their own interests. So no war
over the Arctic. All we have to worry about now is the fact the ice is melting, which will speed global warming (because open
water absorbs far more heat from the sun than highly reflective ice), and ultimately melt the Greenland icecap and raise sea levels
worldwide by seven metres. But that's a problem for another day.
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CEA CP
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1NC CEA CP
CEA’s solve better than treaties
Hathaway 2008 [Oona Hathaway Associate Professor of Law, Yale Law School May, 2008 Yale Law
Journal 117 Yale L.J. 1236 “Treaties' End: The Past, Present, and Future of International Lawmaking in the
United States” lexis]
This Article makes the case for a new direction: nearly
everything that is done through the Treaty Clause can
and should be done through congressional-executive agreements approved by both houses of Congress.
The congressional-executive agreement includes the House of Representatives in the lawmaking
process, is less subject than is a treaty to stonewalling by an extreme minority, and rarely
requires the passage of separate implementing legislation to enter into effect. Moreover, the agreement
is often easier to enforce and can be subject to more stringent rules regarding unilateral
withdrawal, thus allowing the United States to make stronger and more consistent international
commitments. A congressional-executive agreement might seem to lack the ""dignity' of a
treaty." 8 But in fact a congressional-executive agreement that is expressly approved by
Congress is more legitimate and more reliable than a treaty, and it can and should be used for
even the most important international commitments. 9
Treaties require huge political capital- high bar to get a Senate supermajority
Hathaway 2008 [Oona Hathaway Associate Professor of Law, Yale Law School May, 2008 Yale Law
Journal 117 Yale L.J. 1236 “Treaties' End: The Past, Present, and Future of International Lawmaking in the
United States” lexis]
[*1310] The same
lawmaking process that sets too low a bar (or, more accurately, no bar) in the House
sets an excessively high bar in the Senate. The two-thirds rule imposed by Article II is among the
highest imposed in the Constitution - used only for such matters as impeachment, override of
presidential veto, amending the Constitution, and removal of the President from office for inability to discharge the powers and
duties of his office. 216 There
are some who celebrate this high hurdle, arguing that a treaty
commitment should be subjected to the increased scrutiny and heightened level of consensus
that comes with a supermajority voting requirement. Yet there are substantial, and frequently
unacknowledged, costs to this exceptionally high requirement.¶ The supermajority requirement
imposed by the Treaty Clause means that treaties that enjoy the support of a strong majority of
the population and its political representatives may still not receive approval. This is all the more true because the
Senate is extremely malapportioned - far more so today than was the true at the Founding, or even a century ago. 217 Senators
representing only about eight percent of the country's population can halt a treaty. 218¶ Achieving
support of a twothirds majority also requires playing to the polarized extremes of modern American politics. 219
Consider, by way of illustration, the difference in ideological positions of the fifty-first vote in the
Senate versus the sixty-seventh. If we array the senators in the 109th Congress from most liberal
to most conservative according to a widely used measure of ideological position, we see that in the
109th Congress the sixty-seventh senator was just over twice as conservative as the fifty-first
senator. 220 In the [*1311] reverse dimension, the sixty-seventh senator was also just over twice
as liberal as the fifty-first. In other words, the supermajority requirement means treaties must
gain the support of senators that are twice as conservative or liberal as the so-called median
voter in the Senate. 221
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A2: Perm do the CP
CEA’s are functionally different than treaties
Hathaway 2008 [Oona Hathaway Associate Professor of Law, Yale Law School May, 2008 Yale Law
Journal 117 Yale L.J. 1236 “Treaties' End: The Past, Present, and Future of International Lawmaking in the
United States” lexis]
It is puzzling that two distinct methods of lawmaking operate side-by-side within a single nation all the more so because virtually no other country deals with international law as we do. Most other countries make international
law in the same way they make domestic law - a norm followed by one of our two methods (congressional-executive agreements)
but not the other (the Treaty Clause). Because the Treaty
Clause requires that all but thirty-three members
of the Senate assent to a treaty and includes no provision for participation by members of the
House, it surely makes a substantial difference which of these two methods is used. For this
reason alone, it would be natural to expect that there are compelling, consistent reasons why
each method is used in particular areas or instances.
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CP Solvency- Maritime Agreements
CEA would uniquely be beneficial for LOST
King 2007 [Andrew J. King Associate at Archer Norris Law Firm University of California, Hastings College
of the Law, San Francisco, J.D., 2007 Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly Winter, 2007 34 Hastings
Const. L.Q. 329 “Thawing a Frozen Treaty: Protecting United States Interests in the Arctic with a
Congressional-Executive Agreement on the Law of the Sea” lexis]
The current status of UNCLOS in the United States Senate provides an unusual and valuable
opportunity to consider the full potential of the Congressional-Executive agreement as a means
to effectuate international agreements. It is within the president's prerogative, under the
executive's Article II foreign relations powers, to withdraw the stalled UNCLOS treaty [*349]
from its interminable languor in the Senate, and resubmit the Convention as a CongressionalExecutive agreement. Additionally, while this course of action may have serious political costs and ramifications, they are
outweighed by the urgent need for the United States to take its full place at the Arctic table.¶ As previously discussed, for practical
political reasons, a president can normally make a calculated decision whether to submit an international agreement as a treaty or a
Congressional-Executive agreement. Generally a smart political operator, the president will usually be able to gauge beforehand
which method is likely to obtain the required votes while generating the least political heat. For example, presidents have used their
political savvy in determining that the United Nations Charter agreement was best submitted as a treaty but NAFTA and
participation in the WTO were best approved as Congressional-Executive agreements. 156 Of course, sometimes a treaty signed by
an outgoing president is disavowed by the new administration before it has any chance of being approved in either form. The Bush
Administration's opposition to the Kyoto Protocol signed by President Clinton is an obvious example. 157 Further, unpopular treaties
without much political attention do get stalled from time to time. The strange circumstances of UNCLOS, however, render it a
different animal and require a more radical solution.¶ President Clinton signed and submitted UNCLOS to the Senate with a
reasonable hope and expectation of its passage. 158 On the date of its submission, October 7, 1994, Democrats controlled both the
House and the Senate, and a Democrat, Senator Claiborne Pell served as Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. 159
Hopes for a swift passage were dashed, however, by the dramatic election results of November 1994, which saw Republicans regain
control of both Houses of Congress. 160 In a near fatal blow, it soon became clear that arch-conservative isolationist [*350] Jesse
Helms would become the new Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; the gateway through which UNCLOS was
required to pass. 161¶ With Helms' retirement, following years of his successful blocking of any progress on the treaty, supporters
hoped for a new beginning, especially given the strong support of President Bush. 162 Even so, despite hearings and a unanimous
vote out of committee in 2004, a handful of isolationist Senators continue to utilize procedural tactics to prevent a floor vote. 163¶
Thus, since its October 1994 submission to the Senate, two presidents of very different political stripes have urged UNCLOS's
ratification to no avail. Because an Article II treaty is within the exclusive purview of the Senate, there is a very real danger that
UNCLOS could languish there indefinitely, allowing seabed claims and critical decisions regarding the future of the Arctic to be made
without the United States having a voice.¶ The contention that a president has the power to unilaterally withdraw a treaty from the
Senate admittedly runs counter to some recent pronouncements from Washington, D.C. For example, during the first year of the
current Bush Administration, the president sought to formally withdraw a rejected treaty - the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
("CTBT") - from the Senate, but "State Department lawyers told the White House that a president cannot withdraw a treaty from the
Senate once it has been presented for approval." 164 In that instance, President Bush, who had hoped to kill the CTBT through
withdrawal, ultimately "resolved to let [it] languish in the Senate, where its supporters concede they do not have the votes to revive
it." 165 Moreover, earlier that year, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee issued a robust defense of its treaty power that
foreshadowed the CTBT advice. 166¶ [*351] The State Department's opinion runs counter to the broad sweep of executive power in
international relations under Article II. 167 Eminent international law professor Michael J. Glennon has noted that custom
apparently supports a requirement that the president seek Senate consent for the withdrawal of a disfavored treaty. 168 However,
Glennon also reasoned that:¶ ¶ Given the President's authority to decline to ratify a treaty approved by the Senate, it might
nonetheless be argued that he thus possesses, a fortiori, the lesser authority to forestall Senate approval by withdrawing a treaty.
No instance has been identified in which an executive request for the return of a treaty has been rejected, however, or in which the
Executive "withdrew" a treaty from the Senate without its consent. 169¶ ¶ Even if the State Department lawyers and others are
correct in their conclusion that the president lacks the power to withdraw a treaty from the Senate without its consent, consent to
the withdrawal of UNCLOS could be achieved in return for a commitment to pursue a Congressional-Executive agreement on the
same terms. The Senate opposition to the CTBT's withdrawal was due to the Administration's stated goal of killing the treaty once
and for all. 170 Here, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has unanimously supported the passage of UNCLOS and if promised a
Congressional-Executive agreement in its place, would likely consent to its withdrawal. And even if, for some reason, the treaty
remained stuck in the Senate, it is not clear why the president could not simply initiate a rival Congressional-Executive agreement by
having a sympathetic Representative introduce a bill in the House containing the same terms as the treaty.¶ If,
as a majority
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of constitutional scholars have maintained, the Congressional-Executive agreement is in itself a
constitutional means to make international accords, there can be nothing unconstitutional
about using it to replace the treaty form of UNCLOS currently stalled in the Senate. In fact, while
there may be other prudential concerns for a [*352] president, such a move would be constitutionally sound even if the Senate
rejected the treaty. 171 The president may not relish a confrontation with conservative Senators whose support and assistance may
be needed on a range of other matters. Nonetheless, as
is clear from the St. Lawrence Seaway saga, when an
international agreement like the Law of the Sea is vital enough to the prosperity and security of
the United States, the prospect of its successful passage outweighs the political costs of upsetting a
small segment of the Senate. 172 Resubmission of UNCLOS in the alternative Congressional-Executive
form is an idea whose time has come.
CEA’s solve maritime agreements- basically everything other than LOST is a CEA
in that field
Hathaway 2008 [Oona Hathaway Associate Professor of Law, Yale Law School May, 2008 Yale Law
Journal 117 Yale L.J. 1236 “Treaties' End: The Past, Present, and Future of International Lawmaking in the
United States” lexis]
Yet that is not the case. Although there are patterns to the current practice of using one type of agreement or another, those
patterns have no identifiable [*1240] rational basis. For example, most free trade agreements are concluded through
congressional-executive agreements. By contrast, agreements on investment and commercial matters - issues no less critical to the
smooth operation of the global economy - are concluded through both treaties and congressional-executive agreements. The
Law of the Sea Convention mentioned at the outset was brought to the Senate under the Treaty
Clause. But most other fisheries and maritime agreements are concluded through congressionalexecutive agreements. Human rights agreements are concluded as treaties. Meanwhile, the vast majority of education,
health, and debt-restructuring agreements with developing countries - issues that can be just as important to human dignity - are
concluded as congressional-executive agreements. Compared with agreements authorized as congressional-executive agreements, a
higher share of agreements considered under the Treaty Clause are multilateral. Nonetheless, the
vast majority of
multilateral agreements are concluded through congressional-executive agreements.
Interchangeability applies uniquely to maritime matters
Hathaway 2008 [Oona Hathaway Associate Professor of Law, Yale Law School May, 2008 Yale Law
Journal 117 Yale L.J. 1236 “Treaties' End: The Past, Present, and Future of International Lawmaking in the
United States” lexis]
[*1263] [*1264] In many areas, a significant number of agreements were concluded as Article II
treaties, but congressional-executive agreements appear to be important as well - these are
areas where the interchangeability thesis comes closest to being accurate. These include
investment (forty-three Article II treaties and seventy-seven congressional-executive agreements), 63 maritime matters
(fifty-three Article II treaties and sixty-eight congressional-executive agreements), 64 education (one
Article II treaty and sixty-seven congressional- [*1265] executive agreements), 65 nuclear safety and technology (five Article II
treaties and nineteen congressional-executive agreements), 66 and judicial and criminal assistance (more than twenty Article II
treaties and congressional-executive agreements). 67 Trade, usually thought of as an area in which congressional-executive
agreements dominate, is also an area of shared authority: over two hundred congressional-executive agreements on trade were
concluded during [*1266] the 1980s and 1990s, 68 but there were significant numbers of Article II treaties as well. 69
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CP Solvency- General
Weight of scholarly evidence votes neg on solvency deficits
Hathaway 2008 [Oona Hathaway Associate Professor of Law, Yale Law School May, 2008 Yale Law
Journal 117 Yale L.J. 1236 “Treaties' End: The Past, Present, and Future of International Lawmaking in the
United States” lexis]
Since at least the 1940s, the weight of scholarly opinion has rested with the first view. Wallace
McClure wrote in 1941 that "executive agreements and treaties have been used interchangeably to
accomplish seemingly identical purposes" and hence "there is, prima facie, no reason to deny the
existence of constitutional authorization for the use of executive agreements relating to
whatever subjects may be dealt with by the treaty-making power." 10 Shortly thereafter Edward Corwin
concluded that executive agreements through incremental "constitutional development" had
come to serve many of the same purposes as treaties. 11 And near the close of World War II, Myres McDougal
and Asher Lans wrote that "our constitutional law today makes available two parallel and completely inter-changeable procedures,
wholly applicable to the [*1245] same subject matters and of identical domestic and international legal consequences, for the
consummation of intergovernmental agreements." 12¶ This view
has continued to hold sway among much of
the scholarly community. Louis Henkin, writing in the mid-1990s, concluded that "it is now widely
accepted that the Congressional-Executive agreement is available for wide use, even general use, and
is a complete alternative to a treaty." 13 The 1987 Restatement (Third) of Foreign Relations Law endorsed
interchangeability, noting that, "at one time it was argued that some agreements can be made only as treaties ... . Scholarly opinion
has rejected that view." 14 More recently, [*1246] Bruce Ackerman and David Golove offered a powerful defense of the
interchangeability position, albeit a modified one. They argued that the concept of interchangeability dates not to the founding of
the nation, but to the New Deal era. Over the course of the late 1930s and early 1940s, Congress, the President, the courts, and legal
scholars together developed a new constitutional consensus that permitted the President to submit international agreements to
both houses of Congress for approval in lieu of the Article II process. 15 By
the time a majority of both houses of
Congress approved the 1945 Bretton-Woods Agreement that would create the foundations of a
new world economic order, the congressional-executive agreement had ascended to the core of
U.S. international lawmaking, where it remains today. 16
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A2: Yoo Article 1 Powers
CEA’s can be used outside of Article I powers
Hathaway 2008 [Oona Hathaway Associate Professor of Law, Yale Law School May, 2008 Yale Law
Journal 117 Yale L.J. 1236 “Treaties' End: The Past, Present, and Future of International Lawmaking in the
United States” lexis]
For example, Yoo's
claim that congressionally authorized executive agreements are used exclusively
for agreements that fall within Congress's Article I powers whereas treaties are used for
agreements that extend beyond Article I is contradicted by the evidence. There is little evidence
that the two instruments are used exclusively in certain areas of law, much less in the constitutionally
guided manner that Yoo suggests. Quite the contrary: in many areas of international law - including
investment, maritime matters, education, nuclear safety and technology, judicial and criminal assistance, and trade - Article
II treaties and congressional-executive agreements are used side-by-side. Moreover, areas of
law in which Article II treaties are used extensively, including human rights, dispute resolution, arms control,
aviation, the environment, labor, consular relations, taxation, and telecommunications, [*1271] almost never extend
beyond Congress's Article I powers. If agreements on human rights, labor, and taxation were beyond Congress's Article
I powers, then the Civil Rights Acts, the Labor Department, and the Internal Revenue Service would seem to be unconstitutional
exercises of federal power as well.
Yoo’s argument assumes an overly narrow interpretation of the commerce
clause
Hathaway 2008 [Oona Hathaway Associate Professor of Law, Yale Law School May, 2008 Yale Law
Journal 117 Yale L.J. 1236 “Treaties' End: The Past, Present, and Future of International Lawmaking in the
United States” lexis]
Regardless of its accuracy at the time he wrote, Yoo's position has become less tenable in the
years since. The pendulum appears to have swung back once again toward a more expansive
interpretation of the Commerce Clause power [*1343] by the Supreme Court. 314 Hence under Henkin and Yoo's
approach, the gap between Congress's legislative power and the Treaty Clause would once again
appear vanishingly small. Although there has been some retrenchment by the Supreme Court on the extent of
congressional power since its heights, there are few international agreements that would fall beyond the
enumerated powers as currently understood and for which an Article II treaty would therefore
be required. For example, under this approach, a treaty that gave victims of gender-motivated violence the right to sue their
attackers in federal court would arguably need to be concluded under Article II. 315
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CP Solvency- Solves Better
CEA’s solve better than treaties
Hathaway 2008 [Oona Hathaway Associate Professor of Law, Yale Law School May, 2008 Yale Law
Journal 117 Yale L.J. 1236 “Treaties' End: The Past, Present, and Future of International Lawmaking in the
United States” lexis]
The Treaty Clause has been steadily losing influence and importance over the course of the century as congressional-executive
agreements have gradually eclipsed it as the central method of international lawmaking in the United States. In this Part, I argue that
it is time to complete the transition, by replacing most of the remaining Article II treaties with ex
post congressional-executive agreements.¶ Doing so would have several clear benefits. First and
foremost, this way of making international law would enjoy increased legitimacy and stronger
democratic credentials. But there are also practical benefits: congressional-executive agreements, I argue, are not
only less likely to be held hostage by a small minority than are Article II treaties; they also
generally create more reliable commitments, both because they are more likely to be enforced
and because they can be more difficult for a single branch of government to unilaterally undo.
This final advantage is significant. The very purpose of international agreements, after all, is to serve as a method of committing the
parties to the agreement to an agreed course of action.¶ The current system of international lawmaking in the United States already
takes advantage of these benefits in some areas. But these advantages are forfeited in others. In
those areas most
dominated by the Treaty Clause - especially those where the Article II process is used as the
exclusive means of approving international agreements - agreements are much more vulnerable
to being held hostage by a small number of extreme political actors, are more difficult to
implement, and can be easier for the President to unilaterally undo. It is therefore in those areas that the
more frequent use of congressional-executive agreements would bring the greatest benefits.¶ To be clear, this is not an argument
for complete interchangeability of the two instruments as a matter of law. There are certain acts to which the treaty power does not
extend and hence where legislation passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the President is required to create a binding
and enforceable commitment (which is, as I shall show, a significant reason weighing in favor of concluding such an agreement as a
congressional-executive agreement instead). 211 At the same time, there is a much smaller set of cases in which treaties will
continue to be required. 212 In
the vast majority of cases in which either instrument can be used where, that is, treaties and congressional-executive agreements are legally interchangeable there are [*1308] strong reasons for preferring a congressional-executive agreement even if a
treaty might traditionally have been used. These reasons are the subject of this Part.
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Congressional Executive Agreements are becoming more popular than the
norm for ratifying a treaty, and it is better
Smith, Shedd, and Murrill 4/15/2013, Jane M. Smith Legislative Attorney Daniel T.
Shedd Legislative Attorney Brandon J. Murrill Legislative Attorney, Why Certain
Trade Agreements Are Approved as Congressional-Executive Agreements Rather
Than Treaties, http://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/97-896.pdf
In the fall of 2007, Senate hearings finally commenced on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, a treaty that has
been languishing in the Senate since 1994, when Bill Clinton was still a fresh face in the White House. Submitted to the Senate under
the Treaty Clause of the Constitution, the treaty must gain the consent of two-thirds of the Senate in order to become law for the
United States—a hurdle it has been unable to clear for over a decade because of a small but determined opposition. Meanwhile,
free trade agreements between the United States and Peru, Colombia, and Panama are also up for approval. But these agreements
are proceeding not through the Treaty Clause but as “congressional-executive agreements,” subject to approval by a majority of
both houses of Congress. Signed in 2006, one has already been approved by Congress. As
these examples show, the
process for making binding international agreements in the United States today proceeds along
two separate but parallel tracks: one that excludes the House of Representatives and another
that includes it, one that requires a supermajority vote in the Senate and another that does not,
one that is expressly laid out in the Constitution and one that is not. Of the two methods for
making international law in the United States, the Treaty Clause—which requires a two-thirds
vote in the Senate and bypasses the House of Representatives—is the better known; it is
principally used to conclude agreements on human rights, taxation, environment, arms control,
and extradition. But an increasingly common path is the congressional-executive agreement,
approved by Congress through the enactment of ordinary legislation passed by both houses and
signed into law by the President. This Issue Brief argues that nearly everything that is done
through the Treaty Clause can and should be done through ex post congressional-executive
agreements. It begins by laying out the clear benefits of ex post congressional-executive
agreements over Article II treaties. First and foremost, international law made through ex postcongressional-executive agreements enjoys greater legitimacy and stronger democratic
credentials. But there are also practical benefits: congressional-executive agreements, I argue,
are not only less likely to be held hostage by a small minority than are Article II treaties; they
also generally create more reliable commitments, both because they are more likely to be
enforced and because they can be more difficult for a single branch of government to
unilaterally undo. The current system of international lawmaking in the United States already
takes advantage of these benefits in some areas. But these advantages are forfeited in others. In
those areas most dominated by the Treaty Clause—human rights chief among them—
agreements are much more vulnerable to being held hostage by a small number of extreme
political actors, are more difficult to implement, and are easier for the president to unilaterally
undo. It is therefore in those areas that the more frequent use of congressional-executive
agreements would bring the greatest benefits. The Issue Brief concludes with a discussion of how this
transformation of international lawmaking in the United States could be brought about. It shows that making this proposed change
does not require legislation or a constitutional amendment. It rather requires only a commitment by the President to do things
differently, and the willingness of Congress to cooperate. The Treaty Clause’s voting structure gives rise to real concerns about the
democratic legitimacy of international law in the United States. By now it seems normal that the Treaty Clause excludes the House of
Representatives from the process. That exclusion was originally justified by a need for secrecy and a desire to have the Senate
function as a council of advisors in the treaty-making process. Yet these rationales were almost immediately undermined by actual
practice. By the end of George Washington’s presidency, “advice and consent” had been reduced to “consent” alone. Hence the
Article II process specifying exclusion of the House—the body of Congress designed to be most representative of the population
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(with membership based on population, not territory) and most responsive to popular control (with two-year, rather than six-year,
terms)—is based largely on a set of assumptions that are no longer correct, if indeed they ever were. The
ex post
congressional-executive agreement, which requires approval by a majority in both Houses, has
greater democratic legitimacy than the Article II treaty as a result. Democratic theorist Robert
Dahl, comparing the treaty power and congressional-executive agreements, wrote: “an
executive agreement combined with a joint resolution of Congress is much the superior
alternative. Surely majority action by both Houses is more ‘democratic’—in the sense that
majority rule is an essential element of democratic procedure.” The exclusion of the House is particularly
problematic when set in comparative context. The United States, Mexico, and Tajikistan are the only countries in the world that
provide for less involvement by a part of the legislature in treaty-making than in domestic lawmaking (by excluding the House in the
United States) and make the results of this process automatically part of domestic law in more than a few confined areas of law. This
gives rise to the possibility that Presidents could game the system, using the international lawmaking process as an end-run around
the House. But even if this possibility is discounted (and admittedly it is only likely to arise in rare circumstances), the broader
implications of the United States’ comparatively restrictive process are both substantial and too often neglected. Critics of
international law frequently contend that international law is undemocratic, basing much of their complaints on the odd,
exclusionary process by which the United States conducts treaties. The assumption behind the complaint is apparently that the U.S.
process, so weakly democratic, is also the international norm. The U.S. process is indeed weakly democratic, but it is far from the
norm. If the democratic problem with international law is that the American international lawmaking process excludes the House,
that is a problem easily remedied—by including the House. The exclusion of the House from a significant body of international
lawmaking is particularly problematic in the modern era, when international law and domestic law are increasingly intertwined and
overlapping. International law today does not simply deal in matters of diplomatic relations and border disputes. Modern
international law is about everything from education to tax policy to torture. In this era, the exclusion of the House from
participation in international lawmaking is increasingly dissonant. The same lawmaking process that sets too low a bar (or, more
accurately, no bar) in the House sets an excessively high bar in the Senate. The two-thirds rule imposed by Article II is among the
highest imposed in the Constitution—used only for such matters as impeachment, override of presidential veto, amending the
Constitution, and removal of the President from office for inability to discharge the powers and duties of his office. There are some
who celebrate this high hurdle, arguing that a treaty commitment should be subjected to the increased scrutiny and heightened
level of consensus that comes with a supermajority voting requirement. Yet there are substantial, and frequently unacknowledged,
costs to this exceptionally high requirement. The
supermajority requirement imposed by the Treaty Clause
means that treaties that enjoy the support of a strong majority of the population and its political
representatives may still not receive approval. This is all the more true because the Senate is
extremely malapportioned far more so today than was the true at the Founding, or even a
century ago. Senators representing only about 8% of the country’s population can halt a treaty.
Achieving support of a two-thirds majority also requires playing to the polarized extremes of modern American politics. Consider, by
way of illustration, the difference in ideological positions of the fifty-first vote in the Senate versus the sixty-seventh. If we array the
senators in the 109th Congress from most liberal to most conservative according to a widely used measure of ideological position,
we see that in the 109th Congress the sixty-seventh senator was just over twice as conservative as the fifty-first senator. In the
reverse dimension, the sixty- seventh senator was also just over twice as liberal as the fifty-first. In other words, the
supermajority requirement means treaties must gain the support of senators that are twice as
conservative or liberal as the so-called median voter in the Senate.
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CP Solvency- Durability
CEA’s are actually more durable than treaties
Hathaway 2008 [Oona Hathaway Associate Professor of Law, Yale Law School May, 2008 Yale Law
Journal 117 Yale L.J. 1236 “Treaties' End: The Past, Present, and Future of International Lawmaking in the
United States” lexis]
Congressional-executive agreements create more reliable international commitments than do
Article II treaties. This is an important and perhaps surprising advantage. It is important because the central purpose of an
international agreement is to commit states to act in ways consistent with the agreement. It may be surprising, because, as just
argued, the bar in Congress is generally higher for Article II treaties - which might be thought to create a stronger assurance of
political durability. Indeed, the
very limited scholarship on the issue to date has argued that, because of
this higher bar, treaties do in fact create a stronger commitment. 236 That scholarship is
misguided. Fixated on vote thresholds in the Senate, it has missed the two core reasons why
congressional-executive agreements create stronger commitments than do Article II treaties:
their stronger domestic legal status and their more stringent rules regarding withdrawal from an
enacted agreement.
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CP Solvency- Durability
CEA’s sidestep enforceability problems associated with self-execution of
treaties
Hathaway 2008 [Oona Hathaway Associate Professor of Law, Yale Law School May, 2008 Yale Law
Journal 117 Yale L.J. 1236 “Treaties' End: The Past, Present, and Future of International Lawmaking in the
United States” lexis]
International law and domestic law are separate but deeply intertwined legal systems. 237 The mere fact that a state is bound as a
matter of international law does not ipso facto mean that the state is bound as a matter of domestic law. Whether it is or not
depends on domestic law - that is, how and when international legal obligations are "brought back home." International
law
truly binds only when there is a way to enforce a state's obligation under international law in
domestic courts. This is where the difference between treaties and congressional-executive
agreements becomes interesting: a congressional-executive agreement creates a more reliable
commitment on behalf of the United States than does a treaty because unlike a treaty it erases
this line between domestic and international law - allowing for a one-stage rather than a multi-stage process to
create an enforceable legal commitment.¶ To understand this difference, we must examine how international obligations become
enforceable as a matter of U.S. domestic law. With treaties, this is often a two-step process. The U.S. Constitution specifies that once
ratified, treaties are the "Supreme Law of the Land." 238 That would seem to settle the matter. When it comes to applying this rule,
however, it becomes quite a bit more complicated than it first appears. To begin with, there are two types of treaties: those that are
self-executing - meaning that they become part of domestic law immediately upon ratification - and those that are non-selfexecuting - meaning that they require Congress to enact implementing legislation before they become enforceable. 239¶ [*1318]
Treaties that are self-executing are, by virtue of the Supremacy Clause, enforceable in domestic
court upon ratification. Yet this does not necessarily mean that treaties are always and in every
case enforced. The relative legal status of state law, federal statutory law, treaties, and constitutional law has been an active
subject of debate over the course of American history. Today, most scholars agree that treaties have a status
equivalent to the federal statutory law. 240 Hence where treaty obligations are inconsistent with
the Constitution, the Constitution will prevail. 241 Where they are inconsistent with a federal
statute, courts apply the "last in time rule" whereby the obligation imposed later in time prevails. And where they
are inconsistent with state law, the treaty obligations prevail.¶ Enforcement of treaties that are not self-executing
is even more complicated. In such cases, two problems can emerge. First, a non-self- [*1319]
executing treaty could impose an international obligation on the United States that would be
unenforceable as a matter of domestic law - because the necessary implementing legislation has not been passed leaving the country in violation of its international obligations. 242 To avoid this problem, the Senate generally postpones its advice
and consent to a non-self-executing treaty until implementing legislation can be enacted concurrently. 243 Alternatively, it might
give its advice and consent to the ratification of a treaty contingent upon the subsequent enactment of implementing legislation.
244 Although sensible, these solutions are not costless. Under each approach, non-self-executing treaties face an additional hurdle
to ratification: in both cases, [*1320] the
treaty cannot be ratified until implementing legislation is passed.
In other words, the treaty must have the support of the President and two-thirds of the Senate, and
a majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives to enact separate implementing
legislation.¶ This is not the only dualist dilemma posed by the Supremacy Clause. The placement of the authority to consent to
treaties solely in the Senate has created some constitutional puzzles as well. Chief among them is the question of the rights and
responsibilities of the House of Representatives regarding treaties that involve powers granted to it by the Constitution, such as the
power to appropriate funds. 245 The constitutional grant of authority to the Senate to make treaties without the House creates two
seemingly untenable alternatives regarding the House's power of appropriations: either it is empowered to nullify treaties that
require appropriations by failing to appropriate the funds necessary to carry it out, or it is required to make the appropriations
specified in a treaty without exercising any independent judgment. 246 Neither option has [*1321] proven appealing or persuasive.
To address the conundrum, early presidents adopted the custom of sending a message to the House of Representatives when a
treaty might require an appropriation. In some of those cases, the appropriation was voted before the presentation of the treaty to
the Senate. 247 Similar arguments have been made in the past about treaties that provide for reciprocal raising and lowering of
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duties, the acquisition or cession of territory, regulations of commerce with foreign nations, naturalization of aliens, and agreements
to engage in or refrain from war. 248¶ Congressional-executive
agreements avoid many of these dualist
dilemmas. Congressional-executive agreements are, after all, created by means of legislation.
That legislation not only has the status equivalent to federal statutory law, it is federal statutory
law. There is little difference between most congressional-executive agreements and selfexecuting treaties that do not infringe on the House's traditional scope of authority - in both cases,
they create binding legal obligations that are inferior to the Constitution, subject to the later-in-time rule with federal statutes, and
superior to state law. Yet when an agreement is not explicitly self-executing, a congressional-executive agreement can offer
significant advantages. Congressional-executive
agreements are generally presumed self-executing
legislation creating them, moreover, can include any necessary
implementing language. The legislation provides, in effect, one-stop shopping: the same act that
unless specified otherwise. The
provides the authority to accede to the international agreement can also make the necessary statutory changes to implement the
obligation incurred.¶ This
advantage is even more pronounced in the wake of the Supreme Court's
recent decision in Medellin v. Texas. 249 The Court held that none of the treaty obligations at
issue in the case were self-executing and hence the obligations were unenforceable in federal court in the absence of
implementing legislation. 250 Though the full impact of this ruling is not yet entirely clear, the decision appears at the
very least to raise new doubts about whether many U.S. treaty obligations are binding under
domestic law - doubts that would be [*1322] largely absent were the agreements instead
enacted as congressional-executive agreements.
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Another problem with a treaty is that it can be terminated or interpreted at any
time by the president; CEA stops the possibility of this happening
Krutz and Peake, 2009, Glen Krutz is a political scientist and teaches at the University of Oklahoma
JEFFREY S. PEAKE. Associate Professor. Department of Political Science, Treaties and Executive
agreements: A history, http://www.press.umich.edu/pdf/9780472116874-ch1.pdf
Presidents maintain two other important treaty powers beyond their negotiation and choice of
form: treaty interpretation and treaty termination. Presidents do not appear to be constrained
legally in their decision to terminate treaties.8 To be sure, the unilateral termination of a treaty by a president is
uncommon in practice and raises serious domestic and inter- national political questions;9 however, the Supreme Court
has concluded that treaty termination is a power of the executive, which can be checked by the legislature
through statute (Goldwater v. Carter 444 U.S. 996 [1979]; see O’Brien 2003), something congressional opponents have been unable
or unwilling to do (Rudalevige 2005: 208).The law
is also murky when it comes to treaty interpretation. The
constitutional text is unclear about which branch is responsible for interpreting a treaty once it
is ratified. Presumably, the executive maintains this authority when a treaty provision is unclear,
but that does not necessarily mean that presidents are free to reinterpret treaties in force (Kennedy 1986). The constitutional
matter remains largely unsettled, however, allowing presidents and proponents of executive power to argue that interpretation is
largely an executive prerogative (see, e.g., Yoo 2001), though the recent decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (126 U.S. 2749 [2006]) is a
blow to this school of thought. Finding, in that case, that the military tribunals set up through executive order by the Bush
administration violated the Geneva Conventions, the Court suggested that the executive and legislative branches together interpret
the meaning of treaties.1
House involvement ensures the US is a more reliable partner with CEA’s
Hathaway 2008 [Oona Hathaway Associate Professor of Law, Yale Law School May, 2008 Yale Law
Journal 117 Yale L.J. 1236 “Treaties' End: The Past, Present, and Future of International Lawmaking in the
United States” lexis]
Yet another advantage of congressional-executive agreements arises because the House is an
equal participant in creating them. The constitutional dilemma that exists when a treaty requires
making decisions traditionally within the House's core scope of authority does not exist in the
case of a substantively identical congressional-executive agreement because the House is
directly involved in the creation of the agreement. We can see this by looking once again at the changes in the
way that international trade obligations are agreed to. Before enactment of the Tariff Act of 1890, international agreements to raise
or lower duties ran squarely into the dilemma outlined above. A House Report from 1925 recounted that in "treaties affecting
revenue legislation or the raising or lowering of duties ... . the necessity of the concurrence by the House ... has been very generally
asserted by that body and acquiesced in by the Senate." 251 The usual solution to this dilemma was to insert into the treaties a
condition that the changes provided in the treaty would not be effective without the concurrence of Congress. 252 The gradual
move toward concluding trade agreements primarily as congressional-executive agreements put an end to this two-stage process.
Unlike treaties on the same topic, reciprocal trade agreements approved by Congress did not need to be separately submitted for
approval by Congress before taking effect.¶ A
congressional-executive agreement thus creates a more
reliable commitment on behalf of the United States than does a treaty. 253 Unlike treaties,
congressional-executive agreements are not subject to conditional consent and the law creating
them is unquestionably federal law, enforceable by the courts. As a result, the United States is
able to be a more reliable negotiating partner. At the same time, the process of enacting
congressional-executive agreements simply and effectively protects the prerogative of the
[*1323] House to participate in decisions that lie within its traditional scope of authority. 254
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A2: Ratification Key
The CP solves all ratification key arguments- CEA’s have the same effect
internationally
Hathaway 2008 [Oona Hathaway Associate Professor of Law, Yale Law School May, 2008 Yale Law
Journal 117 Yale L.J. 1236 “Treaties' End: The Past, Present, and Future of International Lawmaking in the
United States” lexis]
It is worth pausing to consider whether there are any international legal consequences of ceasing to use treaty ratification through
the Treaty Clause for nearly all international agreements. Would
changing the way international law is made in
the United States mean relinquishing the power to join agreements designated as "treaties" or
agreements that require states to "ratify" in order to bind themselves? The answer, in a
nutshell, is no.¶ To begin with, the term "treaty" does not have the same meaning in U.S. and
international law. In the United States, the term is generally used to refer to international agreements that are submitted to
the Senate for advice and consent. 332 In international law, the term "treaty" means "an international agreement concluded
between States in written form and governed by international law, whether embodied in a single instrument or in two or more
related instruments and whatever its particular designation." 333 Hence all
congressional-executive agreements are
in fact "treaties" as that term is used in international law.¶ The international rules regarding
"ratification" are equally open to congressional-executive agreements. International law defers
almost completely to states to decide the method by which they will accept an [*1350]
international legal obligation. It provides only that to bind itself to a treaty agreement, a state
must consent to it "by signature, exchange of instruments constituting a treaty, ratification,
acceptance, approval or accession, or by any other means if so agreed." 334 What is required for
that act of consent to be made is left entirely to domestic law. 335 It is worth emphasizing that
ratification, acceptance, approval, and accession all have equal legal effect. 336 Ratification is, in fact, a
term that is usually used to refer to the narrow set of cases in which the state has earlier "signed" a treaty and then later consents to
be legally bound by it (usually after the agreement has received approval through the domestic political process). 337 When a state
is not among those who signed the treaty at its inception but later consents to be bound by it (again, in a process determined
entirely by domestic law), this act of consent is usually referred to as "accession" rather than ratification - and it is understood to
have exactly the same legal effect. 338¶ At its origins, ratification was a "formal and limited act by which, after a treaty had been
drawn up, a sovereign confirmed, or finally verified, the full powers previously issued to his representative to negotiate the treaty."
339 At a time when communication and travel could take a matter of months, and therefore domestic governments could not direct
negotiations as they occurred, this allowed state representatives to negotiate agreements and provisionally agree to them without
binding the states they represented to agreements the governing authorities had not yet seen, much less approved. 340 Indeed, one
of [*1351] the earliest recorded executive agreements - the Cartel for the Exchange of Prisoners of War with Great Britain,
concluded on May 12, 1813 - indicates that the United States "ratified" the agreement, even though the agreement was "ratified"
not by the Senate but by Secretary of State James Monroe. 341 Today the term is usually used to refer to cases in which a state has
signed a treaty and then requires time to seek approval for it on the domestic level, often through legislative approval. 342¶ Indeed,
the International Law Commission's report on the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which codified customary law
regarding treaty practice, emphasized that the word "ratification" is used in the Convention to refer exclusively to "ratification" on
the international plane. The
distinct concepts of ratification on the domestic and international planes
are related in that domestic approval is necessary for the international act of ratification.
Nonetheless, "the international and constitutional ratifications of a treaty are entirely separate
procedural acts carried out on two different planes." 343¶ In sum, it is possible for a state to "ratify"
a treaty as a matter of international law regardless of what it calls the process of approving the
treaty as a matter of domestic law. And a state can enter an agreement that constitutes a
"treaty" as a matter of international law regardless of what the state calls that same agreement
under domestic law. 344 Thus the decision to end the use of the Treaty Clause will have no
effect as a matter of international law on the United States' ability to enter any international
agreement.
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A2: Not Constitutional
CEA’s have constitutional backing- court cases confirm
CEA would uniquely be beneficial for LOST
King 2007 [Andrew J. King Associate at Archer Norris Law Firm University of California, Hastings College
of the Law, San Francisco, J.D., 2007 Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly Winter, 2007 34 Hastings
Const. L.Q. 329 “Thawing a Frozen Treaty: Protecting United States Interests in the Arctic with a
Congressional-Executive Agreement on the Law of the Sea” lexis]
The current status of UNCLOS in the United States Senate provides an unusual and valuable
opportunity to consider the full potential of the Congressional-Executive agreement as a means
to effectuate international agreements. It is within the president's prerogative, under the
executive's Article II foreign relations powers, to withdraw the stalled UNCLOS treaty [*349]
from its interminable languor in the Senate, and resubmit the Convention as a CongressionalExecutive agreement. Additionally, while this course of action may have serious political costs and ramifications, they are
outweighed by the urgent need for the United States to take its full place at the Arctic table.¶ As previously discussed, for practical
political reasons, a president can normally make a calculated decision whether to submit an international agreement as a treaty or a
Congressional-Executive agreement. Generally a smart political operator, the president will usually be able to gauge beforehand
which method is likely to obtain the required votes while generating the least political heat. For example, presidents have used their
political savvy in determining that the United Nations Charter agreement was best submitted as a treaty but NAFTA and
participation in the WTO were best approved as Congressional-Executive agreements. 156 Of course, sometimes a treaty signed by
an outgoing president is disavowed by the new administration before it has any chance of being approved in either form. The Bush
Administration's opposition to the Kyoto Protocol signed by President Clinton is an obvious example. 157 Further, unpopular treaties
without much political attention do get stalled from time to time. The strange circumstances of UNCLOS, however, render it a
different animal and require a more radical solution.¶ President Clinton signed and submitted UNCLOS to the Senate with a
reasonable hope and expectation of its passage. 158 On the date of its submission, October 7, 1994, Democrats controlled both the
House and the Senate, and a Democrat, Senator Claiborne Pell served as Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. 159
Hopes for a swift passage were dashed, however, by the dramatic election results of November 1994, which saw Republicans regain
control of both Houses of Congress. 160 In a near fatal blow, it soon became clear that arch-conservative isolationist [*350] Jesse
Helms would become the new Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; the gateway through which UNCLOS was
required to pass. 161¶ With Helms' retirement, following years of his successful blocking of any progress on the treaty, supporters
hoped for a new beginning, especially given the strong support of President Bush. 162 Even so, despite hearings and a unanimous
vote out of committee in 2004, a handful of isolationist Senators continue to utilize procedural tactics to prevent a floor vote. 163¶
Thus, since its October 1994 submission to the Senate, two presidents of very different political stripes have urged UNCLOS's
ratification to no avail. Because an Article II treaty is within the exclusive purview of the Senate, there is a very real danger that
UNCLOS could languish there indefinitely, allowing seabed claims and critical decisions regarding the future of the Arctic to be made
without the United States having a voice.¶ The contention that a president has the power to unilaterally withdraw a treaty from the
Senate admittedly runs counter to some recent pronouncements from Washington, D.C. For example, during the first year of the
current Bush Administration, the president sought to formally withdraw a rejected treaty - the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
("CTBT") - from the Senate, but "State Department lawyers told the White House that a president cannot withdraw a treaty from the
Senate once it has been presented for approval." 164 In that instance, President Bush, who had hoped to kill the CTBT through
withdrawal, ultimately "resolved to let [it] languish in the Senate, where its supporters concede they do not have the votes to revive
it." 165 Moreover, earlier that year, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee issued a robust defense of its treaty power that
foreshadowed the CTBT advice. 166¶ [*351] The State Department's opinion runs counter to the broad sweep of executive power in
international relations under Article II. 167 Eminent international law professor Michael J. Glennon has noted that custom
apparently supports a requirement that the president seek Senate consent for the withdrawal of a disfavored treaty. 168 However,
Glennon also reasoned that:¶ ¶ Given the President's authority to decline to ratify a treaty approved by the Senate, it might
nonetheless be argued that he thus possesses, a fortiori, the lesser authority to forestall Senate approval by withdrawing a treaty.
No instance has been identified in which an executive request for the return of a treaty has been rejected, however, or in which the
Executive "withdrew" a treaty from the Senate without its consent. 169¶ ¶ Even if the State Department lawyers and others are
correct in their conclusion that the president lacks the power to withdraw a treaty from the Senate without its consent, consent to
the withdrawal of UNCLOS could be achieved in return for a commitment to pursue a Congressional-Executive agreement on the
same terms. The Senate opposition to the CTBT's withdrawal was due to the Administration's stated goal of killing the treaty once
and for all. 170 Here, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has unanimously supported the passage of UNCLOS and if promised a
Congressional-Executive agreement in its place, would likely consent to its withdrawal. And even if, for some reason, the treaty
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remained stuck in the Senate, it is not clear why the president could not simply initiate a rival Congressional-Executive agreement by
having a sympathetic Representative introduce a bill in the House containing the same terms as the treaty.¶ If,
as a majority
of constitutional scholars have maintained, the Congressional-Executive agreement is in itself a
constitutional means to make international accords, there can be nothing unconstitutional
about using it to replace the treaty form of UNCLOS currently stalled in the Senate. In fact, while
there may be other prudential concerns for a [*352] president, such a move would be constitutionally sound even if the Senate
rejected the treaty. 171 The president may not relish a confrontation with conservative Senators whose support and assistance may
be needed on a range of other matters. Nonetheless, as
is clear from the St. Lawrence Seaway saga, when an
international agreement like the Law of the Sea is vital enough to the prosperity and security of
the United States, the prospect of its successful passage outweighs the political costs of upsetting a
small segment of the Senate. 172 Resubmission of UNCLOS in the alternative Congressional-Executive
form is an idea whose time has come.
The United States Supreme Court has not directly addressed the constitutionality of the
Congressional-Executive agreement as a means to conclude international accords. 117 However,
in 1936, the Court remarked that the president's ability to engage in foreign affairs "did not
depend upon the affirmative grants of the Constitution," and in this "vast external realm ... the President alone
has the power to speak or listen as a representative of the nation." 118 In United States v. Belmont 119 and United
States v. Pink, 120 cases involving the use of sole-executive agreements, the Court ruled that
such "international compacts and agreements ... have a similar dignity" to Article II treaties. 121
Furthermore, as Ackerman and [*345] Golove observed, since World War II "the Court has been extremely deferential on foreign
affairs, allowing Congress and the President to fight out their constitutional battles on their own terms." 122¶ The
most recent
case implicating the legitimacy of the Congressional-Executive agreement is Dames & Moore v.
Regan. 123 There, the Court upheld the use of a sole-executive agreement by President Carter
that secured the release of American hostages held by Iran in exchange for the delivery of frozen Iranian
assets to a claims tribunal in The Hague. 124 In reaching its conclusion, the Court invoked Justice Jackson's famous
concurrence in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer 125 and looked to the extent of congressional
approval of President Carter's acts. 126 The Court found that that Congress had "acquiesced in
the President's action," noting that Congress had previously approved similar claim settlement
agreements and had not objected in this instance. 127 As Ackerman and Golove suggest, if, as indicated by the Dames & Moore
Court, the test of the legitimacy of "international agreements other than treaties" depends on the
support of Congress, then it seems likely that a Congressional-Executive agreement where both
Houses of Congress vote to approve an international accord should easily pass constitutional
muster. 128
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CP- Democracy NB
Treaties undermine democracy- CEA’s solve
Hathaway 2008 [Oona Hathaway Associate Professor of Law, Yale Law School May, 2008 Yale Law
Journal 117 Yale L.J. 1236 “Treaties' End: The Past, Present, and Future of International Lawmaking in the
United States” lexis]
The Treaty Clause's voting structure gives rise to real concerns about the democratic legitimacy
of international law in the United States. By now it seems normal that the Treaty Clause excludes the
House of Representatives from the process. That exclusion was originally justified by a need for
secrecy and a desire to have the Senate function as a council of advisors in the treaty-making process. Yet these rationales
were almost immediately undermined by actual practice. By the end of George Washington's presidency,
"advice and consent" had been reduced to "consent" alone. Hence the Article II process specifying exclusion of
the House - the body of Congress designed to be most representative of the population (with
membership based on population, not territory) and most responsive to popular control (with two-year, rather than
six-year, terms) - is based largely on a set of assumptions that are no longer correct, if indeed they
ever were. 213¶ The ex post congressional-executive agreement, which requires approval by a
majority in both houses, has greater democratic legitimacy than the Article II treaty as a result.
Democratic theorist Robert Dahl, comparing the treaty power and congressional-executive agreements,
wrote: "an executive agreement combined with a joint resolution of Congress is much the
superior alternative. Surely majority action by both Houses is more "democratic' - in the sense
that majority rule is an essential element of democratic procedure." 214
Solves extinction
Diamond 1995 (Larry- Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Prof. or Political Science
Stanford) Promoting Democracy in the 1990s, 1995)
This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming years and decades. In the former Yugoslavia
nationalist aggression tears at the stability of Europe and could easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies through
increasingly powerful international crime syndicates that have made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly
corrupted the institutions of tenuous, democratic ones. Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons continue to
proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered.
Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the
weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness.
LESSONS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern
themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their
neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their
own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one
another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to use on or to threaten one another . Democratic
countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for
investment. They are more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens,
who organize to protest the destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties
since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely
because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are the
only reliable foundation on which a new world order of international security and prosperity can be built.
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Democracy NB 2NC Link Extension
Exclusion of the House makes the internal link enormous
Hathaway 2008 [Oona Hathaway Associate Professor of Law, Yale Law School May, 2008 Yale Law
Journal 117 Yale L.J. 1236 “Treaties' End: The Past, Present, and Future of International Lawmaking in the
United States” lexis]
[*1309] The exclusion of the House is particularly problematic when set in comparative context.
As noted, the United States, Mexico, and Tajikistan are the only countries in the world that
provide for significantly less involvement by a part of the legislature in treaty making than in
domestic lawmaking (by excluding the House in the United States) and make the results of this process
automatically part of domestic law in more than a few confined areas of law. This gives rise to the
possibility that Presidents could game the system, using the international lawmaking process as
an end-run around the House. 215
That undermines treaty solvency
Hathaway 2008 [Oona Hathaway Associate Professor of Law, Yale Law School May, 2008 Yale Law
Journal 117 Yale L.J. 1236 “Treaties' End: The Past, Present, and Future of International Lawmaking in the
United States” lexis]
But even if this possibility is discounted (and admittedly it is only likely to arise in rare circumstances), the
broader implications of the United States' comparatively restrictive process are both substantial
and too often neglected. Critics of international law frequently contend that international law is
undemocratic, basing much of their complaints on the odd, exclusionary process by which the
United States conducts treaties. The assumption behind the complaint is apparently that the U.S.
process, so weakly democratic, is also the international norm. The U.S. process is indeed weakly
democratic, but it is far from the norm. If the democratic problem with international law is that
the U.S. international lawmaking process excludes the House, that is a problem easily remedied
- by including the House.¶ The exclusion of the House from a significant body of international
lawmaking is particularly problematic in the modern era, when international law and domestic
law are increasingly intertwined and overlapping. International law today does not simply deal in
matters of diplomatic relations and border disputes. Modern international law is about everything from
education to tax policy to torture. In this era, the exclusion of the House from participation in
international lawmaking is increasingly dissonant.
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2NC Politics NB
CEA provides fresh momentum for supporters- only the CP solves the link turns
to politics
King 2007 [Andrew J. King Associate at Archer Norris Law Firm University of California, Hastings College
of the Law, San Francisco, J.D., 2007 Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly Winter, 2007 34 Hastings
Const. L.Q. 329 “Thawing a Frozen Treaty: Protecting United States Interests in the Arctic with a
Congressional-Executive Agreement on the Law of the Sea” lexis]
There is also a tactical political rationale behind repackaging UNCLOS as a CongressionalExecutive agreement at this juncture: it would create fresh political impetus to get the
Convention approved. By resubmitting it under the sponsorship of a supportive Representative, the
Administration could generate new media coverage and momentum in the House. With the
House's approval, a brighter spotlight and firmer pressure can be brought to bear on the Senate
to at least give UNCLOS a full floor vote.¶ Presidential withdrawal of the stalled UNCLOS treaty and
resubmission to Congress as a Congressional-Executive agreement is necessary to protect
American interests in the imminent Arctic "gold" rush. While the Senate dithers, America's Arctic competitors are staking out
territory while the United States watches from the sidelines. 173 Now that the cornerstone to proactive Arctic involvement has
languished in committee for over a decade, including two years in the hands of a Senate leadership held hostage by a handful of
isolationists, the president has to consider fresh options. There is a constitutionally sound, currently available mechanism to thaw
this frozen agreement. It is time to turn up the heat and unleash the Congressional-Executive agreement.
Treaties are way more politically costly and require presidential support to get
to the top of the agenda
Hathaway 2008 [Oona Hathaway Associate Professor of Law, Yale Law School May, 2008 Yale Law
Journal 117 Yale L.J. 1236 “Treaties' End: The Past, Present, and Future of International Lawmaking in the
United States” lexis]
Some scholars deny that the two-thirds requirement in the Senate imposes any significant
hindrance to international agreements. They cite the fact that [*1313] few treaties have been
rejected by the Senate. 224 It is true that only a few treaties have been defeated in the Senate (though the
number is larger than proponents of this view sometimes acknowledge). And yet this fact alone does not support the
contention that the Treaty Clause does not impose an obstacle to agreements, even those that
enjoy wide popular support. Under Senate Rules, there is no procedure by which a President can
call a vote on a resolution of ratification. Hence a treaty can remain before the Senate
indefinitely if the Senate chooses not to act. There are, at present, forty-eight treaties pending
before the Senate. 225 The oldest is the International Labor Organization Convention Concerning Freedom of Association and
Protection of the Right To Organize, which was submitted to the Senate on August 27, 1949. 226 Other notable treaties that remain
before the Senate include the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (submitted on November 22, 1971), 227 the International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (submitted on February 23, 1978), 228 the American Convention on Human Rights
(submitted on February 23, 1978), 229 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination [*1314] Against Women
(submitted on November 12, 1980), 230 Convention on Biological Diversity (submitted on November 20, 1993), 231 United Nations
Convention on the Law of the Sea (submitted on October 7, 1994), 232 and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (submitted
on September 23, 1997). 233
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Politics Links
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Treaties breed controversy—UNCLOS is no exception
Steven Groves, senior researcher fellow, June 14, 2014, “The Law of the Sea: Costs of U.S.
Accession to UNCLOS”
UNCLOS, like any complex treaty or piece of legislation, should be thoroughly examined by the
Committee to determine its costs as well as its benefits. At bottom, the disagreement between
those who favor U.S. accession to the convention and those who oppose boils down to a disagreement
regarding whether the benefits of membership are outweighed by the costs. By its nature, no treaty
comes without costs. As with comprehensive legislation, there are often provisions of a treaty that
are uncontroversial and attractive in themselves. Likewise, there are other provisions that are
controversial and divisive. This rule generally holds true for all treaties, including those involving arms
control, human rights, the environment, international courts, and others. UNCLOS is no exception.
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2NC Link Wall
Republicans strongly oppose ratifying LOST
Matt Cover, professor and director of ecology, July 16, 2012, “GOP Senators Sink Law
of the
Sea Treaty; ‘This Threat to Sovereignty’ http://cnsnews.com/news/article/gopsenators-sink-law-sea-treaty-threat-sovereignty
Thirty-four Republican senators have now signed on to a letter circulated by Sen. Jim DeMint (RS.C.) declaring that they will not support ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty. Ratification
would have required a two-thirds vote in the Senate to pass, meaning that 67 Senators would have
needed to vote for the treaty in order for the U.S. to formally agree to it. Now that 34 senators have
pledged to vote against ratification, there are not enough votes to ratify the treaty.“ President
Obama and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry were trying to ram through a misguided treaty that
conveys ownership of the oceans (2/3 of the earth surface) to a United Nations agency and subjects the
U.S. to international environmental judgments,” said Sen. DeMint in a statement released today. “But
conservatives defeated this threat to sovereignty by rallying together enough senators to block
the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST).”
The US senate is becoming progressively more anti-UNCLOS
Christina Wong and Sean Lengell , July 16, 2012, “DeMint: Law of the Sea Treaty now dead”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jul/16/demint-says-law-sea-treaty-nowdead/?page=all
The Law of the Sea Treaty, which entered into force in 1994 and has been signed and ratified by 162
countries, establishes international laws governing the maritime rights of countries. The treaty has been
signed but not ratified by the U.S., which would require two-thirds approval of the Senate. Critics of
the treaty argue that it would subject U.S. sovereignty to an international body, require
American businesses to pay royalties for resource exploitation and subject the U.S. to
unwieldy environmental regulations as defined. The list of treaty opponents has been growing,
and on Monday, Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican and a leader of efforts to block it,
announced that four more Republicans have said that they would vote against ratification: Sens.
Mike Johanns of Nebraka, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Rob Portman of Ohio and Johnny Isakson of
Georgia. “With 34 senators against the misguided treaty, LOST will not be ratified by the Senate this year,”
Mr. DeMint said in a statement on his website. This head count of treaty opponents — if the number
stands — would make it impossible to reach the 67 votes needed to ratify the pact, which Sen.
John F. Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat and Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, plans to bring
to a vote.
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Empirics prove controversy over ratifying LOST
Ernest Z. Bower, Senior Adviser and Sumitro Chair for Southeast Asia Studies, May 25, 2012, “Advancing
the Natinal Interests of the United States: Ratification of the Law of the Sea”
http://csis.org/publication/advancing-national-interests-united-states-ratification-law-sea
The debate over ratifying of the treaty began in 1982 when President Ronald Reagan refused to
send it to Congress even for a discussion. The argument grew more heated following the
renegotiation of the treaty leading to its entering into force in 1994. Those renegotiations
addressed most of Reagan’s concerns and drew the active support of President Bill Clinton, though not of
his opponents in the Congress.
More recently, the treaty was vigorously advanced by President George W. Bush and brought
before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2007. That effort failed to reach the Senate
floor and the bill was shelved again.
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