No, "Despite its members being appointed by parliament, the committee is a private body tasked with awarding a private prize" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Nobel_Committee

Yea, I know that's the official line. But it would be fairly easy for a lawyer to argue otherwise.

That is what lawyers get paid for, but no attempt to impeach Obama was made for accepting the Nobel peace prize which indicates any such argument would have no chance of succeeding, would not be valid.

But Obama did turn down the cash part of the prize, only accepting the medal and diploma, specifically to avoid any such potential problems.

I wouldn't think there is a legal distinction between the cash and the medal. Accepting the money would probably been politically unacceptable even with out any legal issues. But I accept you are correct about the potential legal difficulties in accepting the prize at all:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10...

I don't know about that. Look into the 2010 price to Liu Xiaobo. Norway worked for 6 years to try to repair relations with China after that and trade has only recently been opened again.

The Liu Xiaobo case shows that (some) other countries see the Nobel committee as an unofficial extension of the Norwegian government. If China thought that the Nobel prize was handed out by 6 random dudes in some private club then the Nobel prize probably wouldn't have had such an impact on the relations between the Chinese and Norwegian governments.

Or perhaps China is trying to pressurize the Norwegian government into removing independence from committee, as well as warning other countries not to do anything similar.