Two weeks ago George Leef reveiwed David Bernstein’s new book Lawless: The Obama Administration’s Unprecedented Assault on the Constitution and the Rule of Law. Yesterday, Bernstein  posted some thoughts about how the President’s goals for the Paris climate conference fit into the larger pattern of executive overreach that he discusses in the book:

In his speech at the global climate change conference in Paris, President Obama made it clear that he would like to reach an international agreement that would mitigate the harmful effects of climate change, with each nation binding itself to targets to reduce carbon emissions. What was missing from his speech (and elsewhere) was an acknowledgement that to be binding on the United States any such agreement would need to be in the form of either an executive agreement that would require the approval of both houses of Congress, or a treaty, which would require a positive vote from two-thirds of the Senate. It’s very unlikely that either of these things would be forthcoming from the Republican-controlled Congress.

So the president may agree to a treaty that’s not really a treaty. …

But climate change (see also the Environmental Protection Agency’s creative, but legally dubious, rules on carbon emissions) is hardly the only area where Obama has preferred to govern unilaterally. …

The president’s unilateralism was most surprising when it came to bombing Libya in 2011. Obama told the Boston Globe in December 2007, “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”  …

No one, including the president, was bold or foolish enough to argue that the fighting in Libya, or the Libyan government itself, posed an imminent threat to the United States. The best the Obama administration could come up with was that the use of military force in Libya would prevent instability in the Middle East (ha!) and preserve the credibility and effectiveness of the United Nations Security Council. …

So what exactly is going on here? Here’s where the tie to climate change comes in: The administration is indulging in a form of liberal internationalism that seeks to subordinate adherence to the American Constitution, its separation of powers, and the laws enacted under it to what its advocates consider the much more important values of international cooperation and humanitarianism, which may be undertaken efficiently and efficaciously only by a strong executive. …

This is not an inherently implausible idea, and, though I vehemently disagree with it, it’s surely one that could be adopted by intelligent people of goodwill. But it also happens to be one that conflicts with the president’s oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. He takes no similar oath to protect the credibility of the U.N. Security Council, to stop climate change, or even to preserve America’s standing in the global community. If these perceived obligations are going to take precedence over more mundane and traditional notions of the separation of powers, this should at the very least be championed more explicitly, so a public debate might ensue.