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| Farris: The CRC A Clear and Present Danger to U.S. Sovereignty At a conference on September 23, ParentalRights.org President Michael Farris shared his concerns over the status of parental rights and the advancement of international law in American courts. Halting the Convention on the Rights of the Child in the Senate is not going to be enough. The following is a synopsis of his speech:
Recently, a case before a federal court judge in Philadelphia caught my attention because the decision mentioned the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child. It was a sad, sad case. A New Jersey millionaire went to Moldova and paid someone there to bring him boys. The United States has a federal law making it a crime for any American to travel to foreign countries for the purpose of what is called “sex tourism,” which is child abuse. And this New Jersey millionaire is in jail right now.
Well, the boys who were his victims found a lawyer – or a lawyer found them – and sued this millionaire in a federal civil lawsuit in Philadelphia. They can do that under an act passed by one of our earliest congresses in the late 1700’s, a federal tort claims act. It says any act done by an American citizen in violation of “the law of nations” can be the subject of a federal tort claim. So you can sue somebody if they violated “the law of nations.”
Today we call the law of nations “Customary International Law’ (CIL). It’s not a fair translation, because “the law of nations” in the late 1700’s meant the law of God regarding how nations treat nations. But “the law of nations” has come to mean something quite different today.
I want to be clear. I am glad the judge ruled in favor of the victims - I just wish he had found a different path to get there.
Now, the United States is party to the treaty relevant here – the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on Child Trafficking, Prostitution and Pornography. We don’t have to be a party to the CRC to be a party to the optional protocols, and we are party to two optional protocols which both deal with essentially international issues.
One has to do with child soldiers, and the other is this one on international sex trafficking. Soldiering and the law of war are proper subjects of international law. And international sex trafficking is by definition an international law issue. These don’t deal with the internal domestic policy of the United States.
But the judge didn’t use the fact that we are party to this optional protocol to apply it to this case. He held that because there are about 140 nations that are parties to this treaty, it satisfies the standard of “Customary International Law,” and is therefore a basis for applying the federal tort claims act. So he nailed this millionaire, who should have been nailed. Holding him accountable was the right decision.
But you can do the math. If the optional protocol is binding on the U.S. because 140 nations have ratified it, and the main Convention on the Rights of the Child has 193 parties... {Read the rest of this article online.}
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