ALAN DERSHOWITZ: “Mr. Obama, your Iran deal will fall apart.”

The Framers of our constitution probably would have regarded the nuclear deal with Iran as a “treaty,” subject to a two thirds ratification by the Senate. At the very least they would have required Congress to approve the agreement by a majority vote. It is unlikely that it would have allowed the President alone to make so important and enduring an international agreement.

If President Obama doesn’t treat the Iran agreement with more respect, all his arguments today are beside the point. The agreement won’t have the force of law. . . .

In the two and a quarter centuries since the ratification of the Constitution, the power of the executive has expanded considerably, but the Framers would be shocked by the current situation in which the president alone gets to make an important and enduring international agreement that can be overridden only by two thirds plus one of both the senate and the house.  At the very least, this important and enduring deal should have required a majority vote of Congress. . . .

While a majority of the House and the Senate voted for this exceptional set of rules for approving the Iran agreement, it was only to assure themselves that they would have any say at all in the matter. President Obama’s position was that he could make the “executive” agreement without Congressional approval. . . .

With regard to the deal with Iran, the stakes are so high, and the deal so central to the  continuing security of the free world, that it should — as a matter of democratic governance — require more than a presidential agreement and one third plus one of both houses of Congress.  This is especially true where there is no clear consensus in favor of the deal among the American people.  Though we do not govern by polls, it seems fairly clear that a majority of Americans now oppose the deal.

Let us never forget that America is a democracy where the people ultimately rule, and if the majority of Americans continue to oppose the deal, it will ultimately be rejected, if not by this administration, than by the next. An agreement, as distinguished from a treaty does not have the force of law. It can simply be abrogated by any future president.

Exactly. David Rivkin and Lee Casey made similar arguments last month in the Wall Street Journal. But of course Rivkin and Casey are conservative lawyers, so their concerns about bypassing the Constitution’s treaty provisions may not carry much weight with anyone who is politically left-of-center. Because Dershowitz is a well-known political leftist (and former professor of Obama at Harvard), his opinion may garner more attention. It’s nice to see some liberal/progressives growing a pair, especially those who know a little something about the Constitution (and still care about it). Dershowitz’s Harvard Law colleague, Laurence Tribe, has recently spoken out about the constitutional infirmity of Obama’s Clean Power Plan, and he has been excoriated by Obama worshippers. Dershowitz will presumably now join Tribe on the Obama Administration’s blacklist.