Goldwater v. Carter ::foreign policy, China, and the resurgence of executive branch primacy /

"Goldwater v. Carter tells the story of the Supreme Court decision to uphold President Jimmy Carter's unilateral decision to nullify the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty with the Republic of China (Taiwan), thereby enabling the United States to establish relations with the People's Republic of China. Senator (and former presidential candidate) Barry Goldwater and other members of Congress brought a lawsuit against Carter, arguing that Carter needed Senate approval to take this action. Goldwater claimed that if Carter could withdraw from the treaty with Taiwan, then another president could theoretically withdraw from NATO, thereby endangering the global political order. Ironically, years later, this very threat was posed by President Donald Trump, who stood in the mold of Goldwater's brand of conservatism. Joshua Kastenberg places the case of Goldwater v. Carter in the larger context of executive power. While presidential power had increased in the wake of FDR's New Deal, Congress curbed this expansion of executive branch authority as a result of the Vietnam conflict, placing restrictions on the presidency in areas of foreign policy and national security that had not been seen since the defeat of the League of Nations in the Senate in 1919. The Court's decision in favor of Carter, however, marked a return to the growth of the "imperial presidency," which has since only continued to expand"-