constitutional issues
“If we are to be one nation in any respect, it clearly ought to be in respect to other nations,” wrote James Madison in essay 42 of The Federalist (1787–88) (see Federalist Papers ). The national government’s power to “regulate the intercourse with foreign nations” is second only to the power to provide for national security , he noted, and this “second class of powers” includes the constitutional authority, as Madison outlined, “to make treaties; to send and receive ambassadors, other public ministers, and consuls; to define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations; to regulate foreign commerce, including a power to prohibit, after the year 1808, the importation of slaves….” Concluded Madison, “This class of powers forms an obvious and essential branch of the federal administration.” President Richard M. Nixon shakes the hand of China’s Communist Party leader, Mao Zedong, in 1972. [Source: The U.S. Constitution A to Z; Foreign Affairs]
foreign affairs
concepts