The Constitution of Agreement: A Brief Look at Sub-Federal Cross-Border Cooperation
Michigan State Law Review, Vol. 2006, No. 5, pp. 1179-1191, 2006
13 Pages Posted: 31 Jan 2009 Last revised: 18 Feb 2009
Date Written: January 1, 2006
Abstract
The question addressed in this Essay was prompted by the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact and the companion Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Sustainable Water Resources Agreement. These instruments, taken together, purport to establish a regulatory regime that spans eight states of the United States and two provinces of Canada. The proposed compact is a formal covenant between the participating states and was designed to receive congressional approval under the Compact Clause of the United States Constitution. For its part, the Agreement is a mirror instrument, generally described as a "good faith" or "handshake" agreement, to which the states and provinces are parties. It is the prospect of the proposed compact not receiving congressional consent as well as the status of the obligations undertaken under the Agreement that have raised the specific question addressed in this Essay: what is the legal status of sub-federal cross-border agreements? A satisfactory answer to this question calls for extensive research beyond the scope of this Essay whose modest objective is to simply flag the issues that need closer attention.
Keywords: Constitution, Federalism, Comparative Federalism, International Law, Compact Clause, Treaty Power, Great Lakes, Sub-Federal Agreements
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