| Goldwater v. Carter | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Decided December 13, 1979 | |
| Full case name | Barry Goldwater, et al. v. James Earl Carter, President of the United States, et al. |
| Citations | 444 U.S. 996 (more) 100 S. Ct. 533; 62 L. Ed. 2d 428; 1979 U.S. LEXIS 4144 |
| Case history | |
| Prior | Judgment for defendants, 481 F. Supp. 949 (D.D.C. 1979); reversed, 617 F.2d 697 (D.C. Cir. 1979) |
| Holding | |
| Whether President Carter could unilaterally break a defense treaty with Taiwan without Senate approval was a political question and could not be reviewed by the court, as Congress had not issued a formal opposition. The case was dismissed. | |
| Court membership | |
| |
| Case opinions | |
| Per curiam | |
| Concurrence | Marshall |
| Concurrence | Powell |
| Concurrence | Rehnquist, joined by Burger, Stewart, Stevens |
| Dissent | Blackmun (in part), joined by White |
| Dissent | Brennan |
| Laws applied | |
| U.S. Const. art. II, sct. II | |
Goldwater v. Carter, 444 U.S. 996 (1979), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court dismissed a lawsuit filed by Senator Barry Goldwater and other members of the United States Congress challenging the right of President Jimmy Carter to unilaterally nullify the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty, which the United States had signed with the Republic of China, so that relations could instead be established with the People's Republic of China.
Goldwater and his co-filers claimed that the President required Senate approval to take such an action, under Article II, Section II of the U.S. Constitution, and that, by not doing so, President Carter had acted beyond the powers of his office. While dismissing the case the Court left open the question of the constitutionality of President Carter's actions.
Granting a petition for certiorari but without hearing oral arguments, the court vacated a court of appeals ruling on December 13, 1979, and remanded the case to a federal district court with directions to dismiss the complaint.[1] A majority of six Justices ruled that the case should be dismissed without hearing an oral argument. Justices Lewis Powell and William Rehnquist issued two separate concurring opinions on the case. Rehnquist claimed that the issue concerned how foreign affairs were conducted between Congress and the President, and was essentially political, not judicial; therefore, it was not eligible to be heard by the court. Powell, while agreeing that the case did not merit judicial review, believed that the issue itself, the powers of the President to break treaties without congressional approval, would have been arguable had Congress issued a formal opposition through a resolution to the termination of the treaty. (The Senate had drafted such a resolution, but had not voted upon it.[2]) This would have turned the case into a constitutional debate between the executive powers granted to the President and the legislative powers granted to Congress. As the case stood, however, it was simply a dispute among unsettled, competing political forces within the legislative and executive branches of government, and hence still political in nature due to the lack of majority or supermajority vote in the Senate speaking officially as a constitutional institution. Today, the case is considered a textbook example of the political question doctrine in U.S. constitutional law.