Well, that's scary...

[seawasp]

... this gentleman's done a comic-based explanation of the economics relevant to the TPP and why it sucks so badly. I hadn't ever had some of that stuff explained so clearly before. I was particularly unclear on the fact that treaties can apparently override established law, without going through the usual legal process.

Comments

[terry austin (from livejournal.com)]

Close, but not quite, at least in the US. Treaties are ratified by the Senate, while laws have to pass both houses of Congress.

And, according to the US constitution, a treaty is equal in authority to the constitution itself. A treaty cannot violate the constitution, but it can override federal law (though in real life, it's considerably more complicated than that, of course, with Congress passing enabling law to comply with the treaty).

[ninjarat.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the clarification. I was thinking of the House being involved on the side of domestic laws being passed next to treaty ratification. A good example of how this whole mess works (and it does work after a fashion) is the Copyright Act of 1976 which amends domestic copyright laws to bring them in line with UCC and Berne.