Apparently its a big deal.
I read the yahoo article. I didn’t get it. Can you explain why it is so important constitutionally?
Yes.
The case will have significance in explaining just what Congress’ powers are when it comes to passing laws.
As we all remember from civics class, we live in a system of joint sovereignty: state governments are sovereign, but share sovereignty with the federal government.
The state has plenary police power: basically, like a King, the state can legislate in any area it pleases. The federal government is limited in powers to only those that the Constitution grants it.
However, in those areas where the federal government does have power, its power can eclipse the states’ power, so the state actually can’t legislate in “any area it pleases.” It can only legislate where its powers don’t conflict with the granted powers of the federal government.
Congress’ list of powers are supreme overt the states because the Supremacy Clause in Article VI of the Constitution says so:
So when Congress makes a law under the powers given by the Constitution, that law trumps any state law. No surprise there.
But what about this “treaty” thing? You’ll notice that the laws Congress makes must be under Congress’ congressional powers: (“…the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance [of the Constitution…]”) Congress can’t just make any law they please - it can only be laws that implement Congress’ granted powers. But the treaty business has no such exception: a treaty gets to become the supreme law of the land as long as Congress agrees to it, with no mention of any limits on subject matter.
In 2005, a woman named Carol Anne Bond discovered that her husband had impregnated her best friend. Furious, she vowed revenge. She worked at a chemical processing plant, and used her access at work to teal toxic chemicals. She purchased other chemicals online, mixed them into a toxic paste, and applied that paste liberally to her former best friend’s mail, mailbox, front doorknob, car door, and other convenient targets. Fortunately for Myrlinda Haynes, the erstwhile friend, the toxic paste was bright orange and easily avoidable; she suffered only a burnt finger. But she was upset, and reported these actions to the local police, who inexplicably declined to take any action. She then involved the U.S. Postal Service, pointing out that her mail had been a target, and postal inspectors set up a camera and caught Bond in the act.
Federal prosecutors charged Bond with violating the Chemical Weapons Convention, which bans the unauthorized use or storage of dangerous chemicals. Normally, this is not a crime Congress could reach – the Constitution doesn’t give Congress the power to criminalize chemicals that are used locally. (It’s certainly possible Congress could criminalize these chemicals because they had moved in interstate commerce – but they didn’t.)
But the United States did sign the Chemical Weapons Convention, a treaty intended to limit chemical weapons use by countries, and to enforce the rules of the treaty, Congress passed a law criminalizing the unauthorized use or storage of toxic chemicals. Bond was prosecuted and convicted under this law.
On appeal, she claims that this is unfair: the state had a law against what she did. She should have been prosecuted by the state, she argues. (The maximum sentence she could have gotten from the state was much less than the federal sentence.)
Further, she says, Congress can’t just make any law they please simply because a treaty says so. That would lead to the absurd result that all those so-called “limits” on Congress’ power are illusions: Congress can get around them by making a treaty. She points to the Tenth Amendment, which specifically says that the powers not given directly to Congress under the Constitution belong to the states, or the people. She says that if Congress can get around that reservation of power to the states with a treaty, the Tenth Amendment means nothing, which is an illogical result.
The United States says that not only is the Constitution clear, but that the Supreme Court has already answered this very question: almost a hundred years ago, in Missouri v. Holland, the Court ruled that a treaty protecting migratory bids gave Congress the power to makes laws about the killing of wild birds, a power that is not otherwise mentioned in the Constitution and thus would be reserved to the states.
So: there are two parts to the Constitution that appear to conflict with each other: the Tenth Amendment and the Supremacy Clause.
The Court’s decision in this sordid love triangle story could have far-reaching effects on Congress’ powers.
So by extension, if the UN passed a treaty against firearms, would that give Congress the right to overrule the second amendment? As an example?
Only if the US was a party to the treaty, it having been approved by the Senate. Even then, it would head right back to the Supreme Court, just like this case.
Couldn’t Congress also use the granted post office power to legislate against tampering with mail in this way? Or is it a matter that they could, but happen to not have yet passed such a law relevant to this case?
Nope:
[QUOTE=Reid v. Covert]
It would be manifestly contrary to the objectives of those who created the Constitution, as well as those who were responsible for the Bill of Rights—let alone alien to our entire constitutional history and tradition—to construe Article VI as permitting the United States to exercise power under an international agreement without observing constitutional prohibitions.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Geofroy v. Riggs]
The treaty power, as expressed in the Constitution, is in terms unlimited except by those restraints which are found in that instrument against the action of the government or of its departments, and those arising from the nature of the government itself and of that of the States. It would not be contended that it extends so far as to authorize what the Constitution forbids, or a change in the character of the government or in that of one of the States, or a cession of any portion of the territory of the latter, without its consent.
[/QUOTE]
The Constitution beats a treaty when it comes to specifically enumerated individual rights. What the rule is beyond that… I guess maybe we’ll find out.
The actual issue of Missouri v. Holland was duck hunting. Congress had enacted a law which restricted duck hunting. Several states protested that there was nothing in the Constitution which gave the federal government the power to regulate hunting so it was a state issue. It reached the Supreme Court and the law was overturned.
The United States government then approached the British government and the two of them negotiated and approved a treaty which restricted duck hunting in a manner equivalent to what the overturned law had. And while the Constitution doesn’t give Congress the power to regulate hunting it does give Congress the power to enact treaties. The Supreme Court upheld this principle.
This was an significant expansion of federal power. The federal government could now use treaties to enact laws in areas it had previously been unable to.
This is a great and very readable explanation. You should be a teacher. Thank you 
how are these powers different than regulations that are set up by various federal agencies like the DEA, ATF, EPA, etc.? I don’t follow how those regulations are within the enumerated powers of the Congress yet their implementation has the same effect on regulating our lives. I think they actually have a larger effect on our lives…is this ‘treaty’ business in some sense a similar way to get around the limits of the enumerated powers given to the federal government?
He is in spirit. I learn quite a bit about the legality of things from Bricker’s posts. From this teacher’s perspective, he picked the wrong profession. 
I would argue that that clause has been eroded away since the New Deal (best exemplified by Wickard v. Filburn made everything fall under ICC) and was de facto eliminated with South Dakota v. Dole in effect allowed legislation by pursestrings outside of Congress’ enumerated powers.
Which seems to me to be a perfect description of our modern day Federalist system so good luck winning on that arguement.
Well, maybe when I retire I can pick up a few extra dollars teaching first year law students Crim Pro
Seriously – thanks very much for the kind words.
For those following along, Wickard v. Filburn was a 1940s-era case that examined Congress’ power to set wheat production limits. The Supreme Court decided that farmer Roscoe Filburn’s plan to grow wheat for on-farm consumption was still covered by the Congressional reach of power, even though none of his wheat actually moved in interstate commerce – because, they said, his decision to grow his own wheat means he won’t buy some other guy’s wheat, which affects interstate commerce indirectly. That case dramatically expanded Congress’ power by allowing even slight, attenuated “interstate commerce” affects to justify Congressional lawmaking.
Yes: Wickard was responsible for a huge expansion of Congressional power. But there are limits: in US v. Morrison, the court held that Congress could not create a private cause of action for violence against women, even though women something something interstate commerce. And more directly, in US v. Lopez, the Court held that Congress couldn’t criminalize having a gun within 1,000 feet of a school even if the gun had moved in interstate commerce.
The holding in South Dakota v. Dole had to do with drinking age. Congress cannot set a drinking age, said the Court, but they can permissibly withhold federal highway funds to any state that failed to keep the drinking age at 21, thereby “back dooring” the Constitutional limit on power. That’s true, but not all that relevant to the criminal law in play here.
Now hold on a second - South Dakota v. Dole is often held out as allowing the Federal government to go bully the states in any way Uncle Sam wants by threatening to withhold various types of assistance to the states. In other words, the implication is that the Federal government is allowed to blackmail states.
But that’s not what the ruling was. In essence, it is that when Congress ties strings to funding (in this case, highway funds), the strings must meet certain criteria – among them that the condition cannot be coercive, or robbing states of any discretion. In this specific case, the Federal government withheld 5% of highway funds from South Dakota, which the Court found not to be that big a deal.
ETA: I was responding more to St Cad’s point.
Would the outcome of this case have any effect on diplomatic immunity? That’s covered under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which is a treaty that the US has ratified. As such, diplomatic immunity extends to violations of state or local law, not just federal law. If the Court imposes a limit on the ability of a treaty to pre-empt state law, are the dodgy diplomats going to have to confine themselves to the District of Columbia?
This was back in 1920 when the federal government was a lot smaller in scope. I would tend to agree that treaty powers, by themselves, are a pretty minor issue nowadays.
On the one hand, I’d say the Supreme Court isn’t going to want to overturn this established principle for such a minor gain. It won’t have much effect on the scope of the federal government because that now relies much more strongly on other principles like the commerce clause. But it could have a serious impact on foreign policy because you’d be opening the door for governors and state legislatures to challenge treaties on the basis they violated state sovereignty. This would give state officials opportunities to grandstand for political purposes.
But who knows? The Supreme Court might decide this is a good place to begin pushing back the reach of the federal government. It won’t have much practical effect but it will establish a precedent for latter cases that might challenge federal power on more significant grounds, like the aforementioned commerce clause.
Drug trading is generally an international/interstate business.
The environment tends not to stop at state borders.
And it seems worth noting that for all that everyone says that Federal government has to have an explicit, enumerated right in order to do something, the enumerated rights of the Federal government include the following:
“The Congress shall have Power To […] provide for the […] general Welfare of the United States”
So if they can make any argument that a law is for the general welfare of the nation, then they have that right. It seems harder to think of things that wouldn’t fall under that heading than things which would, so really the limitation seem to be defined more by the Supreme Court’s mood that day than by anything in the Constitution.
Thanks for that summary, Bricker. It was enjoyable to read and I think I get it.
Any thoughts as to how the SCOTUS is likely to rule?
I went and did some more reading about this case, and at least one article stated that the local authorities actually told the victim to take this to the post office. Could that be interpreted as the state voluntarily standing aside to allow the feds jurisdiction? ISTR reading this has happened before in cases where both federal and state laws apply.
Then explain why states could not escape the requirements of NCLB.