Surely enough, we've all heard the whining from every liberal city and state in the country about how regardless of Trump's removal of America from the Paris Climate Accord, they're just going to sign up anyway.
Pardon my ignorance, since I'm not exactly a scholar of constitutional law. But seeing as how the Paris Accord is a multi-national treaty, doesn't that violate the contract clause? Article 1 of the Constitution of the United States, Section 10, Clause 1 states, and I quote-
"No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility."
So, that being the case, wouldn't it be illegal for any individual state to attempt to ratify this treaty on their own, without the consent of the federal government? I haven't done a ton of research on the subject, but there's some faff about it being a "Executive Agreement instead of a Treaty," What does that even mean in this context? Someone more educated on the topic please enlighten me, it would make my day to know that all the coastal liberals can't do shit and have to sit back and accept the US and all of it's constituent states and territories, as a whole, will in no way, shape, or form be involved in their precious "Climate Agreement."
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[–] JohnPaulJones 0 points 3 points 3 points (+3|-0) ago
These agreements seem to be unconstitutional. That being said it's hard to say how the federal government will deal with this as the actions taken are within the realm of the states powers (regulating state trade). There is an interesting animus case here that the left has opened up. Smart industries will take these states to the supreme court claiming that environmental regulations are motivated by animus to uphold an unconstitutional agreement. This is oddly enough along the lines of religious expression cases wherein non-violating expression was denied (ten commandant cases) due to being motivated by an animus to promote one religion over another. There was a similar line of reasoning in the travel ban denial. Anyways this could be interesting although I don't see it going this way as the federal government will likely ignore their commitments as they are largely symbolic.
As always I am not a lawyer.