Trump's exit from UN climate groups ignites legal debate
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Some of President Trump's critics allege that his decision to pull the U.S. out of UN climate agencies' work is illegal — but legal experts aren't as certain.
Why it matters: Trump's withdrawal of the U.S. from nearly 70 groups — including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — is among his biggest retreats from the global stage.
Driving the news: The UNFCCC is often described as a Senate-ratified treaty. It was signed by Republican President George H.W. Bush in 1992.
- It takes one year after the United States formally submits paperwork to the UN before it's no longer a party to the UNFCCC.
- "Once the Senate has ratified a treaty, only the Senate can withdraw from the treaty; this announcement is not just corrupt, it's illegal," Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), the Environment and Public Works Committee's top Democrat, said in a statement.
Reality check: But some legal scholars predict that would-be challengers face an uphill battle.
- "I don't agree with withdrawing from the UNFCCC on policy grounds but I don't think it's illegal, either under international law or US law," Susan Biniaz, a lecturer at Yale's School of the Environment, said in an email.
- Michael Gerrard, founder and faculty director for Columbia's Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, told Axios in an interview that potential litigants' options appear to be "very limited."
Zoom in: Gerrard and other scholars said the question of whether a president can unilaterally remove the U.S. from a Senate-approved pact is largely unexplored legal terrain.
- The Constitution is silent on the issue, University of Pennsylvania constitutional law professor Jean Galbraith told Heatmap: "It tells you how to make a treaty, but it doesn't tell you anything about how to unmake a treaty."
- Gerrard said the Senate's action in 1992 was "not technically a ratification; it's consent" — one of the duties of the chamber under its constitutional "advice and consent" powers.
The Supreme Court did tackle a somewhat similar issue in Goldwater v. Carter, a 1979 case questioning whether then-President Jimmy Carter acted without congressional approval in ending a defense treaty with Taiwan.
- The court ruled in a 6-3 decision to vacate a lower court's ruling and dismiss the case. But there was no ruling on the merits of the constitutional question.
The bottom line: Some analysts say a future president and Congress could rejoin the UNFCC and the Paris Agreement treaty on climate reduction, from which Trump withdrew upon taking office last year.
- "The United States has entered into more than 90 percent of international agreements through different legal mechanisms," Jake Schmidt, a senior strategic director for international climate at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a blog post.
More from Axios:
Trump withdraws from global groups on climate and more in sweeping move
Trump's UN climate exit will set back progress, advocates warn
