Law Center Search Results

The NAM filed an amicus brief on 2/14/00 in this case. In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court held 6/19/00 that federal law preempts a Massachusetts law that bars state entities from purchasing goods and services from companies doing business with Burma. The Court held that the Massachusetts law stands "as an obstacle to the accomplishment of Congress’s full objectives" as expressed in federal legislation concerning Burma in three ways: (i) it "compromise[d]" the President’s "authority not merely to make a political statement but to achieve a political result" in the Nation’s dealings with Burma by lessening the President’s "diplomatic leverage"; (ii) it "penaliz[ed] individuals and conduct that Congress has explicitly exempted or excluded from sanctions"; and (iii) it was "at odds with the President’s intended authority to speak for the United States among the world’s nations." The Court did not "pass on the First Circuit’s rulings addressing the foreign affairs power or the dormant Foreign Commerce Clause," but nonetheless sent strong signals that sub-federal sanctions against foreign nations would be unconstitutional even in the absence of a conflicting federal statute; it noted that "invocation of exclusively national power belies any suggestion that Congress intended the President’s effective voice to be obscured by state or local action" and that "the President’s maximum power to persuade rests on his capacity to bargain for the benefits of access to the entire national economy without exception for enclaves fenced off willy-nilly by inconsistent political tactics."