"American Nationalism," was Re: Fascism & Monopoly Capitalism

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Gordon says:

>  > >  > >Just what constitutes the core of "America" ideologically (in the
>>  >>  >ideology of American patriotism)?
>
>>  >>  The Constitution, of course.
>
>>  >And the Federalist Papers. Maybe even more so.
>
>Yoshie Furuhashi:
>>  In _Empire_, Hardt & Negri use, as an epigram to Part 2.5, the
>>  following remark by Thomas Jefferson: "I am persuaded no constitution
>>  was ever before so well calculated as ours for extensive empire and
>>  self government" (160).  They go on to invoke the _Federalist_ & U.S.
>>  constitution as heralding "a new principle of sovereignty" (169):
>>  "Already in this first phase, then, a new principle of sovereignty is
>>  affirmed, different from the European one: liberty is made sovereign
>>  and sovereignty is defined as radically democratic within an open and
>>  continuous process of expansion.  The frontier is a frontier of
>>  liberty.  How hollow the rhetoric of the Federalists would have been
>>  and how inadequate their own 'new political science' had they not
>>  presupposed this vast and mobile threshold of the frontier" (169)!
>>
>>  Deliberate anachronism on the part of H & N, but suggestive
>>  nonetheless.  American Nationalism = an ideology for the Empire.
>
>However, if the frontier encounters a numerous and advanced
>people, then the resultant assimilation will be ambiguous.

One result of ambiguous assimilation is Americanization of politics 
worldwide.  One of the main characteristics of American politics is 
its litigiousness.  Grievances tend to become grounds of lawsuits in 
the USA, rather than causes of partisan politics (be it electoral, 
military, or whatever).  This list has discussed lawsuits against 
Pinochet, etc., which I think may be seen as examples of once 
uniquely American litigiousness becoming a global phenomenon.  Here's 
an interesting article that gives you a glimpse of an emerging trend: 
"U.S. Courts Become Arbiters Of Global Rights and Wrongs."

*****   The New York Times
June 21, 2001, Thursday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column 3; National Desk
HEADLINE: U.S. Courts Become Arbiters Of Global Rights and Wrongs
BYLINE:  By WILLIAM GLABERSON 

Last year, five Chinese natives sued the former Chinese prime 
minister, Li Peng, in an American court for his role in the Tiananmen 
Square crackdown that killed hundreds of civilians in Beijing.

While visiting the United Nations in September, President Robert 
Mugabe of Zimbabwe was served with a civil suit saying he ordered 
killings, torture and terrorism in his country and seeking $400 
million in damages.

In Brooklyn, a federal judge is considering legal claims of Canadians 
and Israelis in addition to Americans against a French railroad that 
transported people to Nazi death camps.

Those and many other kinds of cases reflect the growing use of the 
American legal system to judge rights and wrongs all over the globe.

The trend, which began in the mid-1980's and has been accelerating in 
recent years, is strongest in human rights cases. But it extends to 
other areas of the law, like business claims under American 
antitrust, securities and racketeering laws and criminal prosecutions 
of foreign terrorists captured abroad.

"The cold war paradigm was the United States as global policeman," 
said Gregory J. Wallance, a lawyer at the international law firm, 
Kaye Scholer in New York, who has written about the trend. "The 
post-cold-war paradigm is the United States as global attorney."

Some of the cases are essentially symbolic, ending in huge civil 
verdicts that may never be collected. But others have led to criminal 
charges here, large civil settlements, or financial recoveries drawn 
from foreign property held in the United States.

There is some resentment over expansion of American legal power, but 
because many of the cases relate to human rights' claims, critics 
have had difficulty drawing attention to their concerns.

American lawyers have cast a wide net. Among others who have been 
sued in this country are the former President Slobodan Milosevic of 
Yugoslavia, the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Prince of Wales and 
former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain.

The expansion of American legal power has been explained in recent 
years as the natural outgrowth of an interconnected world. But 
lately, some lawyers and legal scholars have begun to argue that the 
cases represent a sweeping change that is transforming American 
courts into institutions with international sway.

"What we are exporting now, just as Britain did in the 19th century, 
is our conception of law" said Burt Neuborne, a law professor at New 
York University. Last week, a federal judge awarded Mr. Neuborne $4.4 
million in legal fees for his work on a series of cases against 
German companies and the German government by people forced into 
slave labor by the Third Reich.

A few American lawyers have made millions on the international 
lawsuits, while others are handling the cases largely to make human 
rights or political statements.

Some major legal changes have involved terrorism abroad. Laws passed 
by Congress in recent years and international treaties signed since 
the 1970's have expanded the powers of American courts to try 
terrorism cases.

A federal jury in Manhattan is hearing evidence in deciding the fate 
of a Tanzanian in the bombing of the American Embassy in Dar es 
Salaam, killing 11 people. The jury last week rejected the death 
penalty for a Saudi in the bombing of the American Embassy in 
Nairobi, Kenya, killing 213 people.

The United States used treaty provisions that require countries to 
"prosecute or extradite" terrorism suspects to bring some of the 
defendants in the embassy bombings to this country.

The fact that American prosecutors tried the case is one sign of the 
changing views on international prosecution, several legal experts 
said. Historically, criminal prosecutions were mounted most often 
where the crimes occurred. In 1986, Italian courts convicted four 
Palestinian gunmen who had hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille 
Lauro off the Egyptian coast and killed an American, Leon Klinghoffer.

One reason for the change is "a much more expansive notion of U.S. 
prerogatives to protect its interests," said Ruth G. Wedgwood, an 
international law specialist at Yale.

One example of the new legal thinking was legislation passed by 
Congress in 1996, which for the first time permitted lawsuits in 
American courts against countries that the United States listed as 
sponsoring terrorism. Libya, Cuba and Iran are on the list. Before 
that, such suits were generally barred by American rules that protect 
governments from lawsuits in United States courts.

In February, the Treasury Department authorized the release of $96.7 
million from Cuban assets frozen in the United States. The money went 
to the families of three Miami-based pilots who were shot down by 
Cuban fighter jets in 1996. The families of the pilots, who were 
members of the Cuban exile group Brothers to the Rescue, had sued the 
Cuban government in federal court in Miami under the 1996 law.

Americans have always been able to sue foreign individuals who were 
in this country. But before a landmark ruling of a federal appeals 
court in New York in 1980, American courts were reluctant to get 
involved in disputes between foreigners involving events in other 
countries.

In the 1980 decision, the United States Court of Appeals for the 
Second Circuit said a seldom-used law dating of 1789 authorized 
foreigners to sue other foreigners in this country when they claimed 
violations of international legal norms, like rules against murder or 
torture.

The 1980 case involved a lawsuit by a Paraguayan doctor against a 
former police official who, the court found, has tortured and killed 
the 17-year-old son of the doctor, who was a Paraguayan opposition 
leader.

Since then there have been dozens of other suits under the 1789 law, 
the Alien Tort Claims Act. And in the last few years cases have 
sought increasingly larger damage awards, said Jennifer M. Green, a 
lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, which is 
handling many of the cases.

Last year, a jury in federal court in Manhattan ordered Radovan 
Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader, to pay $4.5 billion in 
damages to people who were raped, tortured and killed in the Balkan 
conflict.

The scope of American judicial expansion is not limited to terrorism 
and human rights cases. American antitrust prosecutors have 
successfully argued that groupings of international companies are 
subject to American rules prohibiting collusive agreements to set 
prices even if only one member of the cartel sells products in this 
country.

Under such rules, executives from Belgium, Britain, Italy, Japan, the 
Netherlands and other countries have been convicted in American 
courts. The Clinton administration began a push to prosecute 
international price fixing, and the Bush administration is expected 
to continue that drive.

But globalism means there are two sides to such expansive notions. 
European regulators have started to apply their own laws to American 
businesses. Skepticism by European regulators has stalled several 
recent mergers by American companies, including General Electric's 
planned $45 billion acquisition of Honeywell International.

Some courts refuse to get involved in foreign matters. American 
courts declined, for example, to hear lawsuits against the Prince of 
Wales and former Prime Minister Thatcher, which claimed they had 
violated human rights in Northern Ireland and Libya.

But American courts are increasingly willing to stretch their 
authority. Among the cases that opened the door was a Supreme Court 
ruling in 1992 that said a Mexican charged with killing an American 
drug enforcement agent could be tried in this country even though 
agents had kidnapped him from Mexico.

Similarly, in 1991, a federal appeals court in Washington approved 
the trial of a man who federal prosecutors said was a Lebanese 
militia official, Fawaz Yunis, who was charged with hijacking a 
Jordanian plane in Beirut and was arrested while on a yacht in the 
Mediterranean.

These cases are a far cry, some lawyers say, from a New York federal 
court's refusal in 1987 to consider the multibillion-dollar lawsuits 
against the Union Carbide Corporation over the Bhopal chemical 
disaster in India.

In addition to court rulings, American legal values are also exported 
informally, Mr. Wallance of Kaye Scholer argued in an article last 
year. As an example he cited boycotts of clothing brands manufactured 
in countries that do not comply with American workplace rules.

So far, criticism of expanding ambitions of the American legal system 
has been muted. But some foreign governments have said they are 
offended by suits in this country, and some American legal experts 
warn that the United States is opening what could be a dangerous 
legal competition with other countries.

Other countries are already trying to expand the influence of their 
legal rules or to fight off the influence of America's legal system. 
Some European countries are resisting a proposed international 
agreement in The Hague that would make it easier to enforce judgments 
of American courts abroad.

If American diplomats and executives become entangled in lawsuits in 
other countries, the United States might start to view its legal 
expansionism in a different light, said Curtis A. Bradley, a law 
professor at the University of Virginia.

In early June, a Chilean judge said he would try to get Henry A. 
Kissinger, the former United States secretary of state, to testify 
about the disappearance of an American in Chile when the dictator 
Augusto Pinochet seized power in the 1970's.

Jack L. Goldsmith, a law professor at the University of Chicago, said 
Americans have not considered the consequences of applying this 
country's law all over the world.

"The United States loves to export our values," Mr. Goldsmith said, 
"but not if it gives other countries the power to review what we do." 
*****

Yoshie