Mark Weisbrot
The
Supreme Court’s unanimous decision yesterday to strike down the Massachusetts
Burma law says more about the pro- business bias of the present Court than it
does about the legal principles involved in the case.
The
Massachusetts selective purchasing law made it hard for companies that do
business in Burma to win contracts from the state. It is difficult to see what
is wrong with that. After all, our law respects the concept of consumer
sovereignty: as individuals, we are free to vote with our dollars and refuse to
buy anything from any company that we dislike.
Shouldn’t
the State of Massachusetts have the same right?
Justice
David Souter, writing for the Court, said no. For him, the Massachusetts Burma
law would "compromise the very capacity of the President to speak for the
Nation with one voice in dealing with other governments."
Well,
maybe so. But then, so does the First Amendment to the Constitution. What would
the Court have done if Massachusetts had passed a resolution condemning Burma’s
military government for gross human rights violations? If all 50 states were to
pass such resolutions, they might "undermine the President’s capacity. . .
for effective diplomacy," as Souter said about the Massachusetts law. Would
the states therefore be forced to rescind such resolutions?
The
1996 Massachusetts law was intended to support the movement for democracy in
Burma, also known as Myanmar. The country is ruled by a military government that
seized power in 1990, after opposition party candidates won more than 80% of the
contested seats in parliament. The newly elected representatives were arrested.
The military government is internationally condemned for political murders and
imprisonment, burning of villages, forced labor, and forced relocation of
hundreds of thousands of people.
A
few months after Massachusetts passed its law, Congress authorized federal
sanctions against Burma. Although Congress expressed no intent to preempt the
Massachusetts law, the Supreme Court somehow found that it did.
The
argument that states are constitutionally excluded from participation in foreign
affairs is weak. As Justice Scalia noted during oral arguments, the
Constitution’s specific prohibitions against state involvement in wars and
treaties "would all be unnecessary if there was some overriding,
unexpressed principle in the Constitution that states can’t get involved in
foreign policy."
Souter’s
concern about the President speaking "for the Nation with one voice"
echoes arguments made by the lawyer for the National Foreign Trade Council, the
consortium of more than 600 companies that won this case. "As trade becomes
more important, it becomes more important for Congress to speak with one
voice."
That
"one voice" is the voice of big business, with the federal government
increasingly acting as a mere echo chamber. Even worse, our government is
working overtime to stifle dissent by transferring power from elected officials
to unaccountable, supra-national institutions.
One
of those institutions is the World Trade Organization. The Court’s opinion
specifically cites the complaint that the European Union and Japan have brought
against the Massachusetts law at the WTO, as part of the foreign policy problem
that the law had created. The multi-national corporations that challenged this
law also stressed the conflict with WTO rules, and the WTO case was clearly a
factor in the Court’s decision.
The
Court’s decision therefore has implications for state and local laws throughout
the country that deal with public purchasing. These include preferences based on
human rights, labor standards, or even environmental standards such as recycled
material in government-purchased goods. Many of these laws are incompatible with
WTO rules, and could lead to similar challenges in federal court.
That
is why Attorneys General from 22 states, as well as 78 members of Congress,
local governments, and dozens of non-profit organizations joined briefs in
defense of the Massachusetts law.
It’s
getting to be a formulaic plot: on the one side, everyone who has a stake in
democracy, human rights, or moral values. On the other, the relentless pursuit
of that "single, unconscionable freedom– free trade."
So
it’s sad to see the whole Supreme Court line up unanimously on the side of big
business. The Court was never called upon to rule on the legality of the
sanctions adopted in the 1980s, by 25 states and 164 local governments, against
the apartheid regime of South Africa. But the implication of this decision is
that the anti-apartheid laws, on which the Massachusetts Burma law was modeled,
would also have been overturned.
Of
course the anti-apartheid sanctions were adopted before agreements like NAFTA
and the WTO had established the supremacy of trade over all other human
concerns.
Welcome
to the New World Order.
Mark
Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in
Washington, DC.