Question

How does the judicial branch relate to foreign policy?

Answer 1

In one short, succinct statement Justice George Sutherland altered the relationship between Congress and the executive branch. “The President [operates] as the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations,” he wrote in the United States Supreme Court’s decision of U.S. v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corporation. Whereas the Constitution lays out distinct, delegated powers to Congress, such as the power to declare war and the power to ratify treaties, and to the executive, primarily the role of the president as Commander-in-Chief, Justice Sutherland’s statement altered the relationship between the two aforementioned branches. Suddenly, the executive branch had a legal precedent with which to become the leading force in foreign policy and upon which it could fall back on if actions are legally challenged.