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Missouri v. Holland
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Missouri v. Holland, 252 U.S. 416 (1920), the United States Supreme Court held that the federal government's ability to make treaties is supreme over any state concerns about such treaties having abrogated any states' rights arising under the Tenth Amendment. The case revolved around the constitutionality of implementing the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. It is also notable for Justice Holmes' reference to the idea of a living constitution.
iously, Congress had passed laws regulating the hunting of migratory waterfowl on the basis that such birds naturally migrated across state and international borders freely, and hence the regulation of the harvest of such birds could not realistically be considered to be province solely of individual states or groups of states.
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Encyclopedia
Missouri v. Holland, 252 U.S. 416 (1920), the United States Supreme Court held that the federal government's ability to make treaties is supreme over any state concerns about such treaties having abrogated any states' rights arising under the Tenth Amendment. The case revolved around the constitutionality of implementing the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. It is also notable for Justice Holmes' reference to the idea of a living constitution.
Facts
Previously, Congress had passed laws regulating the hunting of migratory waterfowl on the basis that such birds naturally migrated across state and international borders freely, and hence the regulation of the harvest of such birds could not realistically be considered to be province solely of individual states or groups of states. However, several states objected to this theory and successfully sued to have the law declared unconstitutional, on the premise that the United States Constitution gave Congress no enumerated power to regulate migratory bird hunting, and hence the regulation of such hunting, if there was to be any, was the province of the states according to the Tenth Amendment.
Congress, disgruntled with this ruling, then empowered the State Department to negotiate with the United Kingdom, which at the time still largely handled the foreign relations of Canada, a treaty pertaining to this issue. The treaty was subsequently ratified and came into force, and required the Federal Government to enact laws regulating the capturing, killing, or selling of the protected migratory birds , an obligation that it fulfilled in the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. The state of Missouri then sued on the basis that the federal government had no authority to negotiate a treaty on this topic.
Judgment
In an opinion by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., the Supreme Court held that the law was in fact constitutional, noting that the treaties clause of the Constitution (Article VI, clause 2), sometimes known as the "supremacy clause," makes treaties the "supreme law of the land," co-equal in status to the Constitution itself, a finding that trumps any state concern with regard to the provisions of any treaty, and further implying that treaty provisions were not subject to questioning by the states under the process of judicial review.
In the course of his judgment, Holmes made this remark on the nature of the constitution.
"With regard to that we may add that when we are dealing with words that also are a constituent act, like the Constitution of the United States, we must realize that they have called into life a being the development of which could not have been foreseen completely by the most gifted of its begetters. It was enough for them to realize or to hope that they had created an organism; it has taken a century and has cost their successors much sweat and blood to prove that they created a nation. The case before us must be considered in the light of out whole experience and not merely in that of what was said a hundred years ago. The treaty in question does not contravene any prohibitory words to be found in the Constitution. The only question is whether [252 U.S. 416, 434] it is forbidden by some invisible radiation from the general terms of the Tenth Amendment. We must consider what this country has become in deciding what that amendment has reserved."
Reception
Many persons saw and still see this ruling as a dangerous implication that Congress or the President could essentially amend the Constitution by the means of treaties with other countries that would abrogate the rights of the people or the States otherwise protected by American law. These concerns came to a head in the 1950s, when the Old Right Conservatives supported the so-called Bricker Amendments, which nearly passed Congress with the required two-thirds majority.
See also
- List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 252
- Reid v. Covert, a 1957 case which stated that no treaty can come in direct violation of the United States, a partial limitation of the ability of the United States to use treaties.
- Medellin v. Texas, US Supreme Court 2008. The Medellin case cast some doubt on how broadly Missouri v. Holland can be applied. Texas had ignored obligations of the United States under a convention, despite a relevant presidential order and a finding of the International Court of Justice. The individual defendant (who had been sentenced to death) was held by the courts, including the Supreme Court, not to have any personal rights to challenge his conviction because of this breach of the United States' international obligations.
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