...or so says an editorial to run in the Washington Post tomorrow, written by Ronald D. Rotunda and J. Peter Pham.
But not surprisingly, it's mostly misdirection and bunk.
More below the fold.
The writers start out fair enough, quoting Article I, Section 9, of the Constitution:
"No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State"
Ah, the "emolument clause", which was added in an effort to insulate and protect ambassadors, the Secretary of State, and other government officers and/or employees and other officers of the United States from undue influence or corruption by foreign governments.
Hmm. And these authors spare no effort in pointing out that the Nobel prize should be considered an "emolument" (from Merriam-Webster online: "the returns arising from office or employment usually in the form of compensation or perquisites").
One could, I suppose, argue this, since the prize seems hardly a "return arising from office or employment", but the effort is unnecessary I think. What Professors Rotunda and Pham gloss over in their piece and hope you won't notice is the origin of the prohibited "emolument" - a "KIng, Prince, or foreign State".
The Nobel prize is funded and administered by the Nobel Foundation, a private foundation formed to carry out the final will of Alfred Nobel, who invented dynamite, and whose bequest of 31 million Swedish Kroner (around 186 million dollars in 2008) is the source of funds for the Nobel prizes and the foundation.
Clearly not a King or a Prince, the professors hang their case on the Nobel prize coming from a "foreign State". But which state? The Nobel prizes for Physics, Physiology and Medicine, Chemistry, Literature, (and later, Economics) are awarded in Sweden, but not by Sweden. And, by Nobel's specific wish, the Peace Prize is awarded in a different country, Norway.
The only justification the authors offer in this regard is that the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize is chosen by a committee elected by the Norwegian parliament, and presumably, that makes the Nobel Foundation, a private foundation and the sole source of the award, a "foreign State". You follow?
Neither do I. The recipients of the prizes in Physics, Chemistry and Economics are chosen by a committee consisting of five members elected by The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The prize in Literature is chosen by a committee of four to five members of the Swedish Academy. For the Prize in Physiology or Medicine, the committee consists of five members selected by The Nobel Assembly, which consists of 50 members elected by Karolinska Institute. Are these groups "foreign States"?
In fact, the Department of Justice has looked at this, and is said to have fairly strict rules regarding the emolument clause, which I think address this case nicely. For instance, a foreign public university is presumed to be part of a "foreign State", and so government employees are limited in accepting gifts, honoraria, stipends, etc, from such a university, since the funding of that university is ultimately controlled by the state. Private universities, on the other hand, are not, even if they are located outside the US.
Once again, the Nobel foundation is a private foundation, and to call it a "foreign State" is such a stretch that Rotunda and Pham pass it quickly by and hope that you didn't notice. What's especially ironic to me is that Alfred Nobel, in laying out his wishes in his will, specifically eschewed nationality in the prizes that would bear his name:
It is my expressed wish that in awarding the prizes no consideration whatever shall be given to the nationality of the candidates, so that the most worthy shall receive the prize...
And of course, they have, regardless of their countries of origin- 63 different countries (so far). Having seen the results of nationalism in European wars, I think Nobel hoped that his awards would rise above all that, and they did.
Of course, that won't stop all the right wing sites linking to this piece, by which the Washington Post continues it's recent tradition of legitimizing right-wing hooey, whether through its reporters (eg Judith Miller), columnists (eg Krauthammer, Broder), contributors (AEI and others), or most of all, its editorial page editors.