Trump’s Wrongful Pardons for International Law Violations

“….he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States….”Article 2, Section 2, US Constitution

ABSTRACT: At the time of a second impeachment trial, this one centering on Trump’s alleged “incitement to insurrection” in early January 2021, there would seemingly be no good reason to reference less serious presidential derelictions. Nonetheless, as a matter of US law, the Constitution makes explicit that the president’s pardoning power is restricted to “Offenses against the United States” (Donald J. Trump issued certain specific pardons for offenses against international law.) The following article clarifies the legal norms involved in this wrongful issuance, and key factual elements of  the former president’s pertinent wrongdoings.

During his persistently defiling tenure, US President Donald J. Trump’s legal wrongdoings were multiple, egregious and manifestly far-reaching. Mr. Trump was especially wanton in regard to required compliance with coinciding expectations[1] of Constitutional law and international law.[2] More precisely, in stark contravention of both the US Constitution  and his  presidential oath of office, several “law of nations” violations were wrongfully pardoned at the end of his tumultuous term in office.[3]

In these vital matters, jurisprudence deserves pride of place. To the extent that law is ultimately an instrument of justice, all civilized legal norms are recognizably interconnected and universally binding. International law,[4] more traditionally called the law of nations,[5] shares its principal conceptual and historic origins with United States law.[6] Above any reasonable contestation, these discoverable wellsprings lie in “Natural Law.”[7]

There are further particulars. Inter alia, international law is an integral part of US law.[8] When an American president encourages or ignores violations of international law, whether by the United States or by any other state (e.g., Trump and Putin’s Russia), he is acting (correspondingly or derivatively) against the Constitution and against natural law.[9] At the same time, though responsible for supporting the core norms of international law, an American president has absolutely no US law-based right to pardon individuals for their violations.

Not any individuals.

Following even a second Trump impeachment trial, Americans need to inquire more fully:  What went wrong when Trump pardons were issued for assorted offenses not committed “against the United States?” Though complicated by very substantial interpenetrations of US law, natural law[10] and international law, the United States Constitution is utterly clear on one specific pardoning exclusion: A president’s power to pardon does not extend to any violations of  international law.

This power is always limited to “Offenses against the United States.”[11] These offenses, moreover, are not subject to any idiosyncratic, whimsical or loosely ad hoc definition. Prima facie, they are limited to “…only those offenses declared to be such by the solemn action of the legislative body.”[12]

There is more. The law of nations, or international law, is federal common law.  The constitutionality of federal subject matter jurisdiction on such primary matters is established at Articles III and VI of the Constitution, and also in those actions involving US treaty violations. Per Judge Edwards in Tel-Oren, actions involving violations of international law arise under US law because “the law of nations[13] is an integral part of the laws of this country.”[14]

And yet, several of Donald J. Trump’s 2020/2021 pardons expressly concerned violations of international law.[15]  These wrongful presidential grants of immunity not only undermined the fundamental law of nations, they were ipso facto unlawful under United States law.[16]  These are some prominent and representative examples:

Michael Flynn, criminal contacts with a foreign (Russian) ambassador

Paul Manafort, financial fraud with a foreign (Russia) government

Mark Siljander, criminal work as a foreign agent for an Islamic charity seeking removal of its name from the official US list of pro-terrorist organizations

Nicholas Slatten,  Blackwater contractor, sentenced for first degree murder in the 2007 massacre of Iraqi civilians including children[17]

Paul Slough, also a member of the “Blackwater Four,” sentenced for the unprovoked massacre of Iraqi civilians

Evan Liberty, for slaughter of Iraqi civilians in Baghdad

Michael Behenna, former US Army lieutenant, for 2008 murder of an Iraqi civilian during the US occupation

Clint Lorance, former US Army lieutenant, convicted in 2013 of war crimes; Lorance ordered his men to open fire on unarmed civilians in Afghanistan. Even former Trump-appointed Secretary of Defense Mark Esper had objected openly to this pardon.

In all of the above cases that involve crimes of war,[18] a competent legal scholar could argue more-or-less cogently that the Trump pardons were not granted solely for violations of international law. Such an argument would be based on the well-established understanding that the laws of war – aka humanitarian international law- have previously been “incorporated” into the laws of the United States.[19] Such a selective argument, however, would overlook that the Trump pardons (1) represented an abuse of a president’s Constitutional obligation to “faithfully execute the law;”[20] and (2) ignored the always-complementary US position that a pardon is “an act of grace, proceeding directly from the power entrusted with the execution of the laws….”[21]

These expressions of impermissible action are not complicated or hard to fathom. US President Donald J. Trump’s pardons were anything but “an act of grace.” Rather, in legal-philosophical terms, they were cynical re-affirmations of the Sophist view of justice revealed inter alia in Plato’s Republic. In that dialogue, says Thrasymachus famously (or infamously), “Right is the interest of the stronger.”[22]

At this point, a continuously core legal problem for the Biden administration will be how to challenge, reverse and/or remediate Donald J. Trump’s  flagrant abuses of the US Constitution’s pardoning power. Are there discoverable ways in which proper actions could be correctly andpragmatically undertaken? Plausibly, valid answers are (1) within calculable reach of disciplined legal reasoning; and (2) best  approached dialectically.[23]

Though now subject to change by President Joe Biden and a willing Senate, the United States is still not a party to the International Criminal Court.[24] In principle,  a prospective plaintiff with an appropriate judicial interest in correcting these matters could bring justifiable  claims into US federal court by way of the Alien Tort Statute (1789).[25] Some examples might be by foreign nationals and identifiable relatives of victims injured or killed by one or several of the above-listed American beneficiaries of wrongful presidential pardon (e.g., the “Blackwater Four”). But even if civil law remedies were allowed in such a markedly complex claim, this particular judicial strategy would not necessarily revoke or remediate any of the now-antecedent Trump pardons.

In 2021, there can no longer exist any reasonable questions about an individual’s criminal responsibility for violations of international law.[26] A de facto result of US President Donald J. Trump’s pardoning of certain individual US citizen actions overseas was to retroactively eliminate or override such established responsibility. In effect, the former president’s pardon was illegal on two separate but closely interrelated grounds:  (1) the general invalidity of pardons for violations of international law and (2) the specific exoneration of particular international crimes.

On these subjects, legal scholars must look ahead. Accordingly, they ought to inquire, “What is to be done now?” The principal underlying question is how to effectively revoke or remediate a series of unlawful US presidential pardons. For a variety of reasons – not the least being a statutory reliance upon foreign nationals in order to support US law – looking to the eighteenth-century Alien Tort Statute for guidance would prove unsatisfactory.

Among other things, Alien Tort was enacted in 1789 for different and very precise reasons; it has never been leveraged for the markedly urgent purpose currently under discussion.[27]

There is more. Under authoritative international law, the criminal responsibility of individuals cannot be removed by the unilateral actions of any national government. This is because a person is always liable for punishment by international law independently of any exculpatory provisions of internal law.

Significantly, this fundamental principle references the unchallengeable “supremacy” of international law over national law.[28] At Nuremberg, the Tribunal included the following statement in its binding final judgment: “…the very essence of the Charter (London Charter of August 8, 1945) is that individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience imposed by the individual state.”[29]

States have a reciprocal and peremptory obligation[30]  to avoid “denials of justice”[31] in the sense intended by international  law.  This vital obligation is based on eminently reasonable concerns that by pardoning a criminal, a state “assumes responsibility for his past acts.”[32] In the particular case of  multiple Trump pardons for violations of international law, especially those pardons involving war crimes, this means reputational consequences. By definition, this signifies consequences that include specific legal diminutions of the United States.

At this stage, the only potentially realistic source for any justice-based remediation  of Trump pardons involving international law would have to originate with President Joe Biden. Though conceivable in law-supporting principle, any presumed imperative to take this technically-complicated route is also apt to be outweighed by the new president’s legitimate hopes for both national and international reconciliation. To be sure, the prospective value of such law-enforcing hopes ought not to be minimized or disparaged, but there should nonetheless remain a prominent place for the US Constitution.

It is a document that deserves to be taken seriously on all counts.

As has now been made manifest, under terms of Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution, a US president has authority to pardon only for “Offenses against the United States.” When Donald J. Trump pardoned several US citizens who had been complicit in various egregious offenses against the law of nations, this president wittingly exceeded his lawful authority. Naturally, as a practical matter, after a sitting president encouraged an armed insurrection  against his own country – an insurrection that led directly to his second impeachment trial – this less palpable Trump violation pales in hierarchical importance. Still, it warrants meaningful condemnation and suitable punishment.

To the extent that Americans could now agree to demand more genuinely law-observant presidents, it will be crucial to preserve legal memory of this  overlooked violation and to do whatever is Constitutionally required to prevent similar pardon-related derelictions . Among other grievous harms, ignoring such a primary legal obligation in the future could sometime heighten the odds of spawning serious international conflict. In an utterly worst-case scenario, this expanded risk-prospect would include even a nuclear war.[33]

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[1] These coinciding expectations concern a US president’s authoritative incapacity to pardon for crimes committed against international law. These normative expectations are also mutually reinforcing.

[2] For sources of international law, see art. 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice: STATUTE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE, Done at San Francisco, June 26, 1945. Entered into force, Oct. 24, 1945; for the United States, Oct. 24, 1945.  59 Stat. 1031,  T.S. No. 993,  3 Bevans 1153, 1976 Y.B.U.N., 1052.

[3] For official US Department of Justice listing of all Trump pardons, see: https://www.justice.gov/pardon/pardons-granted-president-donald-trump

[4] International law, which is an integral part of the legal system of all states in world politics, already assumes a reciprocally common general obligation to supply benefits to one another, and to avoid war at all costs. This core assumption of jurisprudential solidarity is known formally as a “peremptory” or jus cogens expectation, that is, one that is not even subject to question. It can be found already in Justinian, Corpus Juris Civilis, Hugo Grotius, The Law of War and Peace (1625) and Emmerich de Vattel, The Law of Nations or Principles of Natural Law (1758).

[5] The US Neutrality Act, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 960 (originally Sec. 25)(1794) was enacted in order to implement this Law of Nations. Pertinent Congressional authority derived most specifically from article 1, Section 8, clause 10 of the U.S. Constitution. See also Talbot v. Jansen, 3 U.S. (3 Dall.) 133, 156 (1795)(Paterson, J).

[6] International law is ultimately deducible from natural law. According to Blackstone, each state and nation is always expected “to aid and enforce the law of nations, as part of the common law, by inflicting an adequate punishment upon offenses against that universal law….” See: 2 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Book 4, “Of Public Wrongs.” Lest anyone ask about the current significance of Blackstone, one need only point out that Commentaries represent the original and core foundation of the laws of the United States.

[7] Natural Law is based upon the acceptance of certain principles of right and justice that prevail because of their own intrinsic merit.  Eternal and immutable, they are external to all acts of human will and interpenetrate all human reason.  This dynamic idea and its attendant tradition of human civility runs continuously from Mosaic Law and the ancient Greeks and Romans to the present day.  For a comprehensive and far-reaching assessment of the natural law origins of international law, see Louis René Beres, “Justice and Realpolitik:  International Law and the Prevention of Genocide,” The American Journal of Jurisprudence, Vol. 33, 1988, pp. 123-159.  This article was adapted from Professor Beres’ earlier presentation at the International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide, Tel-Aviv, Israel, June 1982.

[8] International law is part of US domestic law. In the precise words used by the U.S. Supreme Court in The Paquete Habana, “International law is part of our law, and must be ascertained by the courts of justice of appropriate jurisdiction, as often as questions of right depending upon it are duly presented for their determination.  For this purpose, where there is no treaty, and no controlling executive or legislative act or judicial decision, resort must be had to the customs and usages of civilized nations.”  See The Paquete Habana, 175 U.S. 677, 678-79 (1900).  See also:  The Lola,  175 U.S. 677 (1900);  Tel-Oren v. Libyan Arab Republic, 726 F. 2d 774,  781, 788 (D.C. Cir. 1984)(per curiam)(Edwards, J. concurring)(dismissing the action, but making several references to domestic jurisdiction over extraterritorial offenses), cert. denied,  470 U.S. 1003 (1985)(“concept of extraordinary judicial jurisdiction over acts in violation of significant international standards…embodied in the principle of `universal violations of international law.’”).

[9] We may recall here Thomas Aquinas’ commentary on Augustine: “St. Augustine says: `There is no law unless it be just.’ So the validity of law depends upon its justice. But in human affairs, a thing is said to be just when it accords aright with the rule of reason; and as we have already seen, the first rule of reason is the Natural Law. Thus, all humanly enacted laws are in accord with reason to the extent that they derive from the Natural Law. And if a human law is at variance in any particular with the Natural Law, it is no longer legal, but rather a corruption of law.” See: SUMMA THEOLOGICA, 1a, 2ae, 95, 2; cited by A.P. D’Entreves, NATURAL LAW: AN INTRODUCTION TO LEGAL PHILOSOPPHY (1951), pp. 42-43.

[10] Emmerich de Vattel’s The Law of Nations or the Principles of Natural Law (1758) gives important emphasis to the natural law origins of international law. Arguing from the assumption that nations are no less subject to the laws of nature than are individuals, he concludes that what one man owes to other men, one nation, in turn, owes to all other nations: “Since Nations are bound mutually to promote the society of the human race, they owe one another all the duties which the safety and welfare of that society require.” With this in mind, Vattel proceeded to advance a permanent standard by which we can distinguish between lawful and unlawful practices in global affairs: “Since, therefore, the necessary Law of Nations consists in applying the natural law to States, and since the natural law is not subject to change, being founded on the nature of things and particularly upon the nature of man, it follows that the necessary Law of Nations is not subject to change. Since this law is not subject to change, and the obligations which it imposes are necessary and indispensable, Nations can not alter it by agreement, nor individually or mutually release themselves from it.” (See: Vattel, The Law of Nations, supra, Introduction to Book I, p. 4.)

[11] “States shall not take….any measures  which may be prejudicial to the international obligations they have assumed in regard to the detection, arrest, extradition and punishment of persons guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.” See Principles of International Cooperation, General Assembly Resolution, 1973 See Principles of International Cooperation in the Detection, Arrest, Extradition and Punishment of Persons Guilty of War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity, GA Res. 3074 (XXVlll), 3 December 1973.

[12] See United States v. Grossman, 1 F. 2d 941, 950 (N.D. 111. 1924).

[13] This law includes certain norms of a customary as well as codified nature. Article 38(1)(b) of the Statute of the International Court of Justice describes international custom as “evidence of a general practice accepted as law.”  59 Stat.  1031,  T.S. No. 993 (June 26, 1945).  The norms of customary international law bind all states irrespective of whether a State has ratified the pertinent codifying instrument or convention.  International law compartmentalizes apparently identical rights and obligations arising both out of customary law and treaty law.  “Even if two norms belonging to two sources of international law appear identical in content, and even if the states in question are bound by these rules both on the level of treaty-law and on that of customary international law, these norms retain a separate existence.”  See Military and Paramilitary Activities (Nicaragua v. U.S.),  1986 I.C.J. Rep.  14,  para. 178 (June 27).

[14] 726 F.2d at 787 (Edwards, J., concurring).

[15] In this regard, consider Emmerich de Vattel, The Law of Nations (1758),  “The first general law, which is to be found in the very end of the society of Nations, is that each Nation should contribute as far as it can to the happiness and advancement of other Nations.”

[16] See e.g., United States v La Jeune Eugenie, 26 F. Cas. 832, 846 (C.C.D. Mass, 1822)(No. 15, 551)(regarding “an offense against the universal law of society.) Per Jordan J. Paust, “…violations of international law are not merely offenses against a sovereign, and a sovereign cannot absolve them.” See: Jordan J. Paust, “Contragate and the Invalidity of Pardons for Violations of International Law,” Houston Journal of International Law, Vol. 10:51 (52). It should also be noted that Professor Paust’s refined work on these complex  legal issues was both seminal and exemplary.

[17] Slatten and the other three convicted Blackwater defendants were found guilty of war crimes (see below) including “Grave Breaches.” This term applies to certain infractions of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and Protocol I of 1977.  The actions defined as “Grave Breaches” in the four Conventions must be performed willfully or intentionally, and against the different groups of “protected person” identified by each Convention.  The High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions are under obligation “to enact any legislation necessary to provide effective penal sanctions for persons committing, or ordering to be committed,” a grave breach of the Convention.  As defined at Art. 147 of Geneva Convention (IV) Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (6 U.S.T.  3516, signed on Aug. 12 1949, at Geneva),  Grave Breaches  “shall be those involving any of the following acts, if committed against persons or property protected by the present Convention:  willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of a protected person, compelling a protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile Power, or willfully depriving a protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed in the present Convention, taking of hostages and extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.  Reference to Grave Breaches can also be found in the INTERIM REPORT OF THE COMMISSION OF EXPERTS,  UNITED NATIONS DOCUMENT,  S/25274,  January 2, 1993, at Sec. 3.,  Art. 47.

[18] “Crimes of War” concern (1) laws on weapons; (2) laws on warfare; and (3) humanitarian rules.  Codified primarily at the Hague and Geneva Conventions, and known thereby as the Law of the Hague and the Law of Geneva, these rules seek, inter alia, to bring discrimination (distinction); proportionality and military necessity into belligerent calculations.  On the main corpus of jus in bello, see: Convention No. IV, Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, With Annex of Regulations,  Oct. 18, 1907,  36 Stat. 2277,  T.S. No. 539,  1 Bevans 631 (known commonly as the “Hague Regulations”);  Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field,  Aug. 12, 1949,  6 U.S.T.  3114,  T.I.A.S.  No. 3362,  75 U.N.T.S.  85;  Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War,  Aug. 12, 1949,  6 U.S.T.  3316,  T.I.A.S.  No. 3364,  75 U.N.T.S.  135;  Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, Aug. 12,  1949,  6 U.S.T.  3516,  T.I.A.S.  No. 3365,  75 U.N.T.S.  287.

[19] It was essentially on the basis of these incorporations (and not antecedent codified and/or customary international law) that the four Blackwater defendants were originally prosecuted by the US Department of Justice. It follows that the herein-discussed international law violation exception to a US president’s power to pardon could not be correctly invoked in these cases. The actual language of their respective pardons excused them only for crimes under US law, which would have included Title 18 federal court) and Title 10 (military court). Nonetheless, at least in principle, these four convicted and pardoned war criminals could still become the object of assorted extradition requests sometime during the upcoming Biden presidency or after – for alleged war crimes in Iraq and/or Afghanistan (venues outside of the United States).Moreover, all  four will remain subject to arrest and prosecution if they should travel anywhere outside of the United States.

[20] Criminal responsibility of leaders under international law is not limited to direct personal action or by official position. On the principle of command responsibility, or respondeat superior, see, e.g., Yamashita v. Styer, 327 U.S. 1(1945); Trial of Wilhelm von Leeb(Case No. 72) 12 L. Rep. Trials War Criminals 1 (1948);William V. O’Brian, The Law of War, Command Responsibility and Vietnam, 60 GEO. L.J.605 (1972); William H. Parks, Command Responsibility for War Crimes, 62 MIL. L. REV. 1(1973). The direct individual responsibility of leaders is also unambiguous in view of the London Agreement, which denies defendants the protection of the act of state defense. See Agreement for the Prosecution and Punishment of the Major War Criminals of the European Axis art. 7, Aug. 8, 1945, 59 Stat. 1544, 82 U.N.T.S. 279.

[21] See United States v, Wilson, 32 (U.S. 7 Pet., 150, 160 (1833)(Marshall, CJ writing for the majority.). See also, Laurence Tribe, American Constitutional Law 193, n.10 (1978). On the president’s obligation to faithfully execute international law, see: J. Paust, “The President is Bound by International Law,” 81 A. J. Int’l L., 377(1987).

[22] Bk. I, Sec. 338 of Plato, The Republic, (B. Jowett tr., 1875).

[23] Taken from Plato’s lexicon of philosophical investigation, dialectic has its root in the Greek verb meaning “to converse,” where the objective of any such conversation is to discover “what each thing actually is.” (Republic.) Speaking through Socrates, it is evident that Plato regarded dialectic as the highest or supreme form of inquiry and knowledge.

[24] https://www.icc-cpi.int/NR/rdonlyres/EA9AEFF7-5752-4F84-BE94-0A655EB30E16/0/Rome_Statute_English.pdf

[25] Originally enacted as section 9 of the Judiciary Act of 1789, granting to district courts original jurisdiction over “any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.” In 1980, in a suit pertaining to the international crime of torture (a crime conceivably relevant to one or more of the listed Trump pardon beneficiaries), the US court upheld federal jurisdiction under the Alien Tort Statute because the crime of torture was in violation of “modern international law.” See: Filartiga v. Pena-Irala; 630 F.2d, 876 (2d Cir. 1980)(Kaufman, J.).

[26] See for example, Respublica v. De Longchamps, 1 U.S. (1 Dall.) 111 (Pa. Sup. Ct 1784).

[27] Alien Tort could only grant actual victims or their survivors a capacity to seek monetary damages. It would not directly serve the interests of countermanding or remediating  any relevant Trump pardons.

[28] Significantly, for the matter at hand, post-Nuremberg, this supremacy extends to leaders, who are now legally responsible even for indirect crimes. In essence, under an always-overriding  international law, the criminal responsibility of leaders is not limited to direct personal action nor is it necessarily limited by official position.  On the peremptory principle of command responsibility, or respondeat superior, see:  In re Yamashita,  327 U.S. 1 (1945);  The High Command Case (The Trial of Wilhelm von Leeb),  12 LAW REPORTS OF TRIALS OF WAR CRIMINALS 1 (United Nations War Crimes Commission Comp., 1949);  see Parks, COMMAND RESPONSIBILITY FOR WAR CRIMES,  62 MIL.L. REV. 1 (1973);  O’Brien, THE LAW OF WAR, COMMAND RESPONSIBILITY AND VIETNAM,  60 GEO. L.J.  605 (1972);   U S DEPT OF THE ARMY, ARMY SUBJECT SCHEDULE No. 27 – 1 (Geneva Conventions of 1949 and Hague Convention No. IV of 1907),  10 (1970).  The direct individual responsibility of leaders is also unambiguous in view of the London Agreement, which denies defendants the protection of the act of state defense.  See AGREEMENT FOR THE PROSECUTION AND PUNISHMENT OF THE MAJOR WAR CRIMINALS OF THE EUROPEAN AXIS,  Aug. 8, 1945,  59 Stat.  1544,  E.A.S.  No. 472,  82 U.N.T.S.  279,  art. 7.

[29] The principles of international law recognized by the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and the judgment of the Tribunal were affirmed by the U.N. General Assembly as AFFIRMATION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF INTERNATIONAL LAW RECOGNIZED BY THE CHARTER OF THE NUREMBERG TRIBUNAL.  Adopted by the U.N. General Assembly, Dec. 11, 1946.  U.N.G.A. Res. 95 (I), U.N. Doc. A/236 (1946), at 1144.  This AFFIRMATION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF INTERNATIONAL LAW RECOGNIZED BY THE CHARTER OF THE NUREMBERG TRIBUNAL (1946) was followed by General Assembly Resolution 177 (II), adopted November 21, 1947, directing the U.N. International Law Commission to “(a) Formulate the principles of international law recognized in the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and in the judgment of the Tribunal, and (b) Prepare a draft code of offenses against the peace and security of mankind….” (See U.N. Doc. A/519, p. 112).  The principles formulated are known as the PRINCIPLES OF INTERNATIONAL LAW RECOGNIZED IN THE CHARTER AND JUDGMENT OF THE NUREMBERG TRIBUNAL.  Report of the International Law Commission, 2nd session, 1950, U.N. G.A.O.R. 5th session, Supp. No. 12, A/1316, p. 11.

[30] According to Article 53 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties: “…a peremptory norm of general international law is a norm accepted and recognized by the international community of states as a whole as a norm from which no derogation is permitted and which can be modified only by a subsequent norm of general international law having the same character.” See: Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, Done at Vienna, May 23, 1969. Entered into force, Jan. 27, 1980. U.N. Doc. A/CONF. 39/27 at 289 (1969), 1155 U.N.T.S. 331, reprinted in 8 I.L.M.  679 (1969).

[31] See The Federalist No. 80 (Hamilton).

[32] See 1 Restatement of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States (Revised) Sec. 711, 2B (Tent, Draft No, 6, 1985).

[33] For early accounts by this author of nuclear war risks and consequences, see: Louis René Beres, Apocalypse: Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Louis René Beres, Mimicking Sisyphus: America’s Countervailing Nuclear Strategy (Lexington, Mass., Lexington Books, 1983); Louis René Beres, Reason and Realpolitik: U.S. Foreign Policy and World Order (Lexington, Mass., Lexington Books, 1984); and Louis René Beres, Security or Armageddon: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (Lexington, Mass., Lexington Books, 1986). Most recently, by Professor Beres, see: Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (New York, Rowman & Littlefield, 2016; 2nd ed. 2018). https://paw.princeton.edu/new-books/surviving-amid-chaos-israel%E2%80%99s-nuclear-strategy