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I negate.

The standard is constitutionality for two reasons.

1. Violating the Constitution destroys American government. If we didnt follow the

Constitution we would destroy the power of judicial review: Justices would have nothing to
follow. We would have no checks on government power because the only branch used to
retroactively determine past wrongs would be shut down.

Keith E. Whittington [How to Read the Constitution: Self-Government and the Jurisprudence of
Originalism. May 1, 2006. http://www.heritage.org/Research/PoliticalPhilosophy/fp5.cfm]

As Chief Justice John Marshall explained over two centuries ago ,

if Congress were to instruct the judges that a citizen
be convicted of treason on the testimony of only one witness when the Constitution requires
two or that a citizen be held criminally liable for actions that were legal when they were
committed, then judges would have no choice but to recognize that the superior law of the
Constitution would have to govern the case, regardless of the instructions of Congress. A [1]

jurisprudence of originalism makes better sense of why John Marshall was correct than does any alternative. Once judges depart from
originalism, once they are no longer guided by the original meaning of the Constitution in
resolving the cases that come before them, their very claim to the power of judicial review
becomes open to question.

2. The Constitution is the basis for our rights and obligations it gives us the only reasonable
instructions about what we can expect from the government and what the government owes us.

Keith E. Whittington [How to Read the Constitution: Self-Government and the Jurisprudence of
Originalism. May 1, 2006. http://www.heritage.org/Research/PoliticalPhilosophy/fp5.cfm]

[The Constitution] it is an act of communication, of instruction, from the supreme lawmaker

within the American constitutional system to government officials. It conveys their intentions as
to what power government officials would have, how that power would be organized, to what
legitimate purposes that power could be used, and what limitations there would be on that
power. To disregard or alter the meaning of the words in the Constitution is tantamount to disregarding or altering the words themselves. In our everyday lives, we
routinely give and follow instructionsparents to children, employers to employees, teachers to students. We make allowances when the instructions are not followed because
those giving the instructions did not make their meaning clear or because those following the instructions genuinely did not understand what was asked of them. We routinely
forgive mere error when the mistake is made in good faith and is difficult to avoid. The point of such instruction, however, is to convey the instructors meaning to the
instructed. The child would be playing the sophist if he attempted to parse the instruction to authorize something that the parent was well understood to have meant to exclude
The point of issuing an instruction is to convey the
(You said no parties, but this is just a gathering of friends and friends of friends.).

meaning of those who are authorized to issue them to those who are obliged to obey them. As
Madison noted, the faithful interpreter must recur to the sense in which the Constitution was
accepted and ratified. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution.[25] It is only by recurring to the
original meaning intended by those who created the Constitution that we can make sense of and maintain the notion that we seek to establish, in the words of the Federalist,
good government from reflection and choice.[26] It is only by carry[ing] ourselves back to the time when the constitution was adopted, recollect[ing] the spirit manifested in
the debates, and seeking the most probable [meaning] in which it was passed, rather than by seeing what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against
it, that we can avoid rendering the Constitution a blank paper by construction. [27]

The negative contends that joining an international court would be unconstitutional.

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First, International courts subvert the presidential pardon which is unconstitutional and a bad
idea.
Kristafer Ailslieger ["WHY THE UNITED STATES SHOULD BE WARY OF THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT: CONCERNS OVER
SOVEREIGNTY AND CONSTITUTIONAL GUARANTEES" Washburn Law Journal Vol. 39 1999 p. 80-105]

The President of the United States has the constitutional authority to grant pardons for offenses
against the United States.110 Alexander Hamilton stated that the purpose of this power was to restore
the tranquility of the commonwealth following times of civil unrest and strife.111 Under the Rome Treaty, the
ICC could trump this constitutional power. For example, if there was some sort of civil unrest in the U.S., such as rebellion, rioting, or terrorism, the
the ICC prosecutor could
President could, perhaps as part of the negotiations to end the unrest, pardon individuals involved. However,
ignore the pardons and bring indictments in the ICC against those individuals if any of their acts constituted
violations of the Rome Treaty. Not only would this allow a supranational actor to defeat the Presidents constitutional
authority, it would also eliminate the pardon as a negotiating tool to end civil unrest.

Second, International courts violate the jurisdiction of the U.S. over its citizens established in
Article III, Section 1. Kristafer Ailslieger 2

Article III, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution establishes that [t]he judicial Power of the United
States, shall be vested in one supreme court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may
from time to time ordain and establish.88 Only a court of the United States may exercise jurisdiction over a U.S. citizen for
offenses committed within the United States.89 Therefore, the Rome Treaty would conflict with the U.S. Constitution if the ICC attempted to assert
The case of Ex parte Milligan90 provides pertinent
jurisdiction over a U.S. citizen for offenses committed on U.S. territory.
case law on this issue. Milligan involved a civilian in Indiana who was arrested, tried, and
sentenced to death by a military court during the Civil War.91 Milligan petitioned for a Writ of
Habeas Corpus, challenging, among other things, the jurisdiction of the military court.92 The United States
Supreme Court declared that [t]he Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the
shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances.93 The Court noted that the Constitution expressly
vests judicial authority in one Supreme Court and such inferior courts as may be established by Congress, and that no part of [the] judicial power of
[o]ne of the plainest constitutional provisions was . . .
the country was conferred on [the military court].94 Thus,
infringed when Milligan was tried by a court not ordained and established by Congress , and not
composed of judges appointed during good behavior.95 Milligans arrest, trial, and sentence were therefore invalid.96 The ICC, like the
military court in Milligan, is clearly not a court ordained under Article III of the Constitution. It
therefore cannot exercise jurisdiction over a U.S. citizen for acts committed in the United States. If it attempted to do
so, it would be [and is]in direct conflict with the Constitution. 97

Treaties do not supersede the Constitution. Kristafer Ailslieger 3:

It has been suggested, however, that the wording of the Supremacy Clause indicates that
treaties are of authority equal to the Constitution , not subordinate to it. Fortunately for Americans, this line of
reasoning is clearly unsupported by historical experience and U.S. case law. In 1803, Thomas Jefferson
wrote, [o]ur particular security is in possession of a written Constitution. 154 There can be only one supreme
law of the land, and in the United States that one is the Constitution. Therefore, a treaty cannot supersede the Constitution. As far back as [In] 1853, in Doe v. Braden,155 the
Supreme Court recognized that treaties may not violate the Constitution, and suggested that courts may invalidate provisions of a treaty that do so. The Braden Court stated
that a treaty, made by proper authority, is law, and the courts of justice have no right to annul or disregard any of its provisions, unless they violate the Constitution of the
United States. This rationale was followed by The Cherokee Tobacco158 case in 1870, in which the Supreme Court stated that [i]t need hardly be said that a treaty cannot
change the Constitution or be held valid if it be in violation of that instrument. In the 1890 case of De Geofroy v. Riggs, the Supreme Court further
discussed the constitutional limitations of treaties. [t]he Court stated: That the treaty power of the United States extends to all proper subjects of
negotiation between our government and the governments of other nations is clear. The treaty power as expressed in the Constitution, is in terms
unlimited, except by those restraints which are found in that instrument against the action of the government or of its departments. It would not be
The Court
contended that it extends so far as to authorize what the Constitution forbids, or a change in the character of the government.
reiterated this position in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, and again in Asakura v. City of Seattle.
The definitive pronouncement on this issue came, perhaps, in Reid v. Covert,165 in which the Supreme
Court stated that no agreement with a foreign nation can confer power on the Congress, or on any

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which is free from the restraints of the Constitution. . If the United States
other branch of Government,
were to sign and ratify the Treaty, it is likely that many of its provisions, if not the entire Treaty,
would be found invalid by the Supreme Court, and any convictions obtained under the Treaty
would be held unconstitutional.

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