So what we see here is a vision of international law that if taken aggressively would literally strike at the heart of some of our basic fundamental principles: separation of power, respect for the Senate's ability to ratify treaties, and the Senate's ability to reject treaties, and respect for federalism and the importance of letting the state courts set their own rules to govern what they do....

[T]he fact is whether we like it not, international law is increasingly entering our domestic domain. The Supreme Court has begun to bring it through cases like Hamdan and Alvarez-MacHain, which allowed a very small opening but still an opening in the door under the Alien Tort Claims Act to international human rights law being a source of direct causes of action here in the United States.

Through various European and other kinds of domestic protection rules, they're trying -- there's an increasing effort to control our use of information in our own country to determined who comes in from outside, and, of course, international law is being used as a rhetorical weapon against us. We are constantly portrayed as being on the losing end, and the negative end of international law developments.