A Shining City Upon a Hill

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Abstract

The choice of whether or not to consider foreign legal material within the decision making process by the SCOTUS has engendered a divisive debate among constitutional theorists, judges, and participants of the political discourse in America. The author investigates the rationale behind this contentious issue by analyzing three landmark decisions from 2002-2005 that have shaped this conflict, and discovers that the debate over constitutional transfer has acted essentially as a proxy for a more deep-seated argument in American legal and political theory. She points out how the debate is influenced by the socio-political and historical contexts of the United States, where the ubiquitous allusion to the founding fathers and constitutional history on both sides of this debate actually blurs the line between conservative and liberal constitutional theory, revealing that both sides ultimately share the same objective: to ensure the rationality of the Supreme Court's decision making process.