In an op-ed in the New York Times on Sept. 25, John Yoo cited a number of reasons to support broad powers for the president in external affairs. In part, he said that “under the Constitution and long practice, the president alone conducts foreign relations. As Justice George Sutherland wrote for the majority in a 1936 Supreme Court opinion (quoting Chief Justice John Marshall), the president ‘is the sole organ of the nation in its external relations, and its sole representative with foreign nations.’”

Marshall made that statement, but not as chief justice. It was as a member of the House of Representatives in 1800, when Jeffersonians had taken steps to either impeach or censure President John Adams for turning over to England an individual charged with murder. Critics of Adams thought the individual was a citizen of the United States, but research demonstrated he was Thomas Nash, a native Irishman.