Law profs Bruce Ackerman and David Golove suggest here that it would be "lawless" for a future U.S. President to repudiate the "Congressionally authorized" Iran deal (as Senator Rubio indicated he would do if elected President):
There has already been too much lawlessness from the presidency since September 11th; Rubio’s celebratory anticipation of further illegalities represents a new low.
In response, over at Opinio Juris, Julian Ku says these profs are wrong, and concludes:
the decision to bypass Congress has got to have a price for the President. And that price is that the Iran Deal does not bind his predecessor either as a matter of constitutional or international law.
There are several legal points at issue here, and I'm not really an expert on them, so I'll stay out of it. As for the underlying policy, I'm in favor of the deal, although I'm not convinced it will achieve as much as supporters hope, but again I'm outside of my area of expertise. But I did want to weigh in on one point from Ackerman and Golove. They say:
The Iran agreement isn’t the only hot-button negotiation approved by Congress. The administration is currently engaged in intensive efforts to win breakthrough Pacific Rim and European trade pacts, which are already slated for “fast-track” consideration by Congress.
The prospect of legislative review is already complicating negotiations, since foreign governments can’t be sure that the administration can can convince the House and Senate to approve a bargain that satisfies their key demands. Nevertheless, momentum is building for a real deal, at least for the Transpacific Partnership.
But there’s one caveat. Up to now, foreign governments have been assuming that if Congress says yes, their deal is legally binding. Yet if Rubio’s assault on congressionally authorized agreements gains ground, the entire diplomatic effort will likely come to a halt: America’s bargaining partners will refuse to alienate domestic supporters by making big concessions once they’re told that the next president can abandon the entire arrangement.
The Constitution is bigger than any particular partisan dispute. If other opponents of the Iranian or Transpacific agreements join Rubio in assaulting the current framework governing American diplomacy, all they will accomplish is the destruction of the country’s credibility—undermining the ability of the United States to serve as a leading architect of world order in the 21st century.
Is it really possible that if a future U.S. President repudiates the deal with Iran, our trading partners will not trust us to uphold commitments made in trade negotiations? That's kind of hard to believe. I suspect that governments with whom we negotiate trade agreements are smart enough to understand the political differences between the TPP and the Iran deal, and will not take a repudiation of the Iran deal as a sign that the U.S. might repudiate the TPP down the road.
