Stealth Ratification – End Run Around the Senate

RED ALERT!!! Ida­ho S.1067 – Stealth Rat­i­fi­ca­tion – End Run Around the Senate

The Oba­ma Admin­is­tra­tion is REQUIRING ALL STATES to pass mod­el leg­is­la­tion writ­ten by the Uni­form Law Com­mis­sion in Chica­go that includes ref­er­ence to the Hague Con­ven­tion on the Inter­na­tion­al Recov­ery of Child Sup­port and Oth­er Forms of Fam­i­ly Main­te­nance. This leg­is­la­tion will sub­ju­gate Amer­i­can law and Amer­i­can courts to the deci­sions of inter­na­tion­al courts, admin­is­tra­tive bod­ies and tri­bunals as it per­tains to fam­i­ly law rel­a­tive to child sup­port and oth­er issues.

In 1995, the Clin­ton Admin­is­tra­tion announced that they would sign the UN Con­ven­tion on the Rights of the Child. They did that – but the Sen­ate refused to rat­i­fy it. To this day it has not been rat­i­fied by the Senate.

UN Con­ven­tion on the Rights of the Child

In 1999, the Home School Legal Defense Asso­ci­a­tion wrote an Analy­sis of the UN Con­ven­tion on the Rights of the Child.

HSLDA: Nan­nie in Blue Berets: Under­stand­ing the UN Con­ven­tion on the Rights of the Child

Child sup­port falls under the cat­e­go­ry of fam­i­ly law – obvi­ous­ly. The Hague Con­ven­tion is bind­ing law.

Arti­cles 18 and 19 of the UN Con­ven­tion on the Rights of the Child

Arti­cle 18
1. States Par­ties shall use their best efforts to ensure recog­ni­tion of the prin­ci­ple that both par­ents have com­mon respon­si­bil­i­ties for the upbring­ing and devel­op­ment of the child. Par­ents or, as the case may be, legal guardians, have the pri­ma­ry respon­si­bil­i­ty for the upbring­ing and devel­op­ment of the child. The best inter­ests of the child will be their basic concern.
2. For the pur­pose of guar­an­tee­ing and pro­mot­ing the rights set forth in the present Con­ven­tion, States Par­ties shall ren­der appro­pri­ate assis­tance to par­ents and legal guardians in the per­for­mance of their child-rear­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties and shall ensure the devel­op­ment of insti­tu­tions, facil­i­ties and ser­vices for the care of children.
3. States Par­ties shall take all appro­pri­ate mea­sures to ensure that chil­dren of work­ing par­ents have the right to ben­e­fit from child-care ser­vices and facil­i­ties for which they are eligible.
Arti­cle 19
1. States Par­ties shall take all appro­pri­ate leg­isla­tive, admin­is­tra­tive, social and edu­ca­tion­al mea­sures to pro­tect the child from all forms of phys­i­cal or men­tal vio­lence, injury or abuse, neglect or neg­li­gent treat­ment, mal­treat­ment or exploita­tion, includ­ing sex­u­al abuse, while in the care of parent(s), legal guardian(s) or any oth­er per­son who has the care of the child.
2. Such pro­tec­tive mea­sures should, as appro­pri­ate, include effec­tive pro­ce­dures for the estab­lish­ment of social pro­grammes to pro­vide nec­es­sary sup­port for the child and for those who have the care of the child, as well as for oth­er forms of pre­ven­tion and for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, report­ing, refer­ral, inves­ti­ga­tion, treat­ment and fol­low-up of instances of child mal­treat­ment described hereto­fore, and, as appro­pri­ate, for judi­cial involve­ment.

There may be oth­er claus­es that are bet­ter indi­ca­tors but the above two are enough to say that Ida­ho Sen­ate Bill S1067 com­bined with the knowl­edge of the require­ment for all states to pass it – con­sti­tute an attempt to do an end run around the U.S. Sen­ate con­sti­tu­tion­al author­i­ty to rat­i­fy inter­na­tion­al treaties. The Oba­ma Admin­is­tra­tion and the Chica­go-based Uni­form Law Com­mis­sion are attempt­ing to imple­ment the bind­ing parts of the UN Con­ven­tion on the Rights of the Child.

The Hague Con­fer­ence on Pri­vate Law is a glob­al inter-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion. They are the World Orga­ni­za­tion for Cross-Bor­der Coop­er­a­tion in Civ­il and Com­mer­cial Mat­ters. The fol­low­ing is an excerpt from their Overview page:

…BUILDING BRIDGES BETWEEN LEGAL SYSTEMS… 

Per­son­al and fam­i­ly or com­mer­cial sit­u­a­tions which are con­nect­ed with more than one coun­try are com­mon­place in the mod­ern world. These may be affect­ed by dif­fer­ences between the legal sys­tems in those coun­tries. With a view to resolv­ing these dif­fer­ences, States have adopt­ed spe­cial rules known as “pri­vate inter­na­tion­al law” rules.

The statutory mission of the Conference is to work for the “progressive unification” of these rules.

This involves find­ing inter­na­tion­al­ly-agreed approach­es to issues such as juris­dic­tion of the courts, applic­a­ble law, and the recog­ni­tion and enforce­ment of judg­ments in a wide range of areas, from com­mer­cial law and bank­ing law to inter­na­tion­al civ­il pro­ce­dure and from child pro­tec­tion to mat­ters of mar­riage and per­son­al status.

Over the years, the Con­fer­ence has, in car­ry­ing out its mis­sion, increas­ing­ly become a cen­tre for inter­na­tion­al judi­cial and admin­is­tra­tive co-oper­a­tion in the area of pri­vate law, espe­cial­ly in the fields of pro­tec­tion of the fam­i­ly and chil­dren, of civ­il pro­ce­dure and com­mer­cial law.