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MOS4429
10-04-11, 06:29 PM
This is not a Marine article, but it definitely is a threat to U.S. Sovereignty and one that many Americans are not even aware, but this is just as much a threat within as terrorism is.
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Farris: The CRC Is a Clear and Present Danger to U.S. Sovereignty

At a conference on September 23, ParentalRights.org President Michael Farris shared his concerns over the status of parental rights and the advancement of international law in American courts. Halting the Convention on the Rights of the Child in the Senate is not going to be enough. The following is a synopsis of his speech:

Recently, a case before a federal court judge in Philadelphia caught my attention because the decision mentioned the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child. It was a sad, sad case. A New Jersey millionaire went to Moldova and paid someone there to bring him boys. The United States has a federal law making it a crime for any American to travel to foreign countries for the purpose of what is called “sex tourism,” which is child abuse. And this New Jersey millionaire is in jail right now.

Well, the boys who were his victims found a lawyer – or a lawyer found them – and sued this millionaire in a federal civil lawsuit in Philadelphia. They can do that under an act passed by one of our earliest congresses in the late 1700’s, a federal tort claims act. It says any act done by an American citizen in violation of “the law of nations” can be the subject of a federal tort claim. So you can sue somebody if they violated “the law of nations.”

Today we call the law of nations “Customary International Law’ (CIL). It’s not a fair translation, because “the law of nations” in the late 1700’s meant the law of God regarding how nations treat nations. But “the law of nations” has come to mean something quite different today.

I want to be clear. I am glad the judge ruled in favor of the victims - I just wish he had found a different path to get there.

Now, the United States is party to the treaty relevant here – the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on Child Trafficking, Prostitution and Pornography. We don’t have to be a party to the CRC to be a party to the optional protocols, and we are party to two optional protocols which both deal with essentially international issues.

One has to do with child soldiers, and the other is this one on international sex trafficking. Soldiering and the law of war are proper subjects of international law. And international sex trafficking is by definition an international law issue. These don’t deal with the internal domestic policy of the United States.

But the judge didn’t use the fact that we are party to this optional protocol to apply it to this case. He held that because there are about 140 nations that are parties to this treaty, it satisfies the standard of “Customary International Law,” and is therefore a basis for applying the federal tort claims act. So he nailed this millionaire, who should have been nailed. Holding him accountable was the right decision.

But you can do the math. If the optional protocol is binding on the U.S. because 140 nations have ratified it, and the main Convention on the Rights of the Child has 193 parties, then it won’t be long before the conclusion is reached that the main CRC is binding under the rule of Customary International Law.

In May, 2010, two cases that got combined before the U.S. Supreme Court – Sullivan v. Florida and Graham v. Florida – dealt with the question of life in prison without parole for juvenile offenders who committed non-capital crimes. These criminals – 17-year-olds, usually – get sentenced to life without parole for a series of burglaries, a series of rapes, that sort of thing. But this violates Article 37 of the CRC, on child punishment. It’s a violation of the same article to sentence them to life in prison with parole. It’s a violation of the same article to spank your child. It’s a violation of the same article to send a child to prison unless it is of the last resort.

The Constitutional Court of South Africa, using this same article, interpreted it to spare from prison a 12-year-old girl who had her grandmother murdered. The girl put sedative in her grandmother’s tea and drugged her, then let two guys in to kill her. She had already hired them and agreed to terms of payment. So she let them in and they strangled the grandmother. That wasn’t good enough for the girl, so they slit the grandmother’s throat. Then the girl brought her 6-year-old sibling in to see what they had done.

But the Constitutional Court of South Africa said it was in violation of Article 37 to sentence her to prison at all because this is her first offense, and the article requires that you never sentence a juvenile to prison at all unless it is a sentence of last resort. The court reasoned: How can it be a sentence of last resort if this is her first offense?

That’s Article 37 in action. Well, Amnesty International and 18 other groups petitioned the Supreme Court in Graham v. Florida to apply Article 37 of the CRC as binding on the U.S. as a matter of Customary International Law.

On behalf of 16 members of Congress, I filed a brief arguing that it is not binding on the U.S., and that it is not relevant in this case. Only American law and precedent should be used in interpreting the American Constitution.

The Supreme Court agreed that the CRC is not binding as Customary International Law. But they still applied it as a helpful guide in their decision. At least it wasn’t found binding – that’s the important thing – but I was hoping for a bigger victory than that.

Now the good news is that 37 senators have cosponsored SR99, a resolution Senator DeMint put in opposing ratification of the CRC. Thirty-four votes kills a treaty, and we have three more than that. Those on the other side can do the math. The treaty is dead – for now. Basically, until we get the Parental Rights Amendment, this has to be done every 2 years, forever. And even doing that doesn’t stop the courts from the gradual implementation of the CRC as Customary International Law, like in the two cases cited above.

Hopefully you can see from these comments that the dangers of the CRC did not disappear with the success of SR99. Until we adopt the Parental Rights Amendment, the threat to our American rights remains, as judges apply the CRC under the “Customary International Law” doctrine.

Please spread the word and persevere with us to defend parental rights until the adopted Parental Rights Amendment can stand between activist judges and the children we are striving to protect.

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2012 - The End of an Error!