442
Ginsburg, J., dissenting
ury Stuart Eizenstat to California Governor Gray Davis and the Insurance Commissioner of California); ante, at 422 (testimony before Congress by Eizenstat, stating that a company's participation in ICHEIC should give it "safe haven from sanctions, subpoenas, and hearings relative to the Holocaust period" (internal quotation marks omitted)). But we have never premised foreign affairs preemption on statements of that order. Cf. Barclays Bank PLC v. Franchise Tax Bd. of Cal., 512 U. S. 298, 329-330 (1994) ("Executive Branch actions—press releases, letters, and amicus briefs"—that "express federal policy but lack the force of law" cannot render a state law unconstitutional under the Foreign Commerce Clause.). We should not do so here lest we place the considerable power of foreign affairs preemption in the hands of individual sub-Cabinet members of the Executive Branch. Executive officials of any rank may of course be expected "faithfully [to] represen[t] the President's chosen policy," ante, at 423, n. 13, but no authoritative text accords such officials the power to invalidate state law simply by conveying the Executive's views on matters of federal policy. The displacement of state law by preemption properly requires a considerably more formal and binding federal instrument.
Sustaining the HVIRA would not compromise the President's ability to speak with one voice for the Nation. See ante, at 424. To the contrary, by declining to invalidate the HVIRA in this case, we would reserve foreign affairs preemption for circumstances where the President, acting under statutory or constitutional authority, has spoken clearly to the issue at hand. "[T]he Framers did not make the judiciary the overseer of our government." Dames & Moore, 453 U. S., at 660 (quoting Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U. S. 579, 594 (1952) (Frankfurter, J., concurring)). And judges should not be the expositors of the Nation's foreign policy, which is the role they play by acting when the President himself has not taken a clear
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