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14 

BOND v. UNITED STATES 

SCALIA, J., concurring in judgment 

Federalist  No.  33,  at  206  (A.  Hamilton).    Yet  given  the 
Antipolygamy  Convention,  Holland  would  uphold  it.  Or 
imagine  that,  to  execute  a  treaty,  Congress  enacted  a 
statute  prohibiting  state  inheritance  taxes  on  real  prop-
erty.  Constitutional?  Of course not.  Again, The Federalist:
“Suppose  . . .  [Congress]  should  undertake  to  abrogate  a 
land tax imposed by the authority of a State, would it not 
be  equally  evident  that  this  was  an  invasion  of  that  con-
current jurisdiction in respect to this species of tax which
its  constitution  plainly  supposes  to  exist  in  the  State 
governments?”  No.  33,  at  206.  Holland  would  uphold  it.
As  these  examples  show,  Holland  places  Congress  only 
one treaty away from acquiring a general police power. 

The  Necessary  and  Proper  Clause  cannot  bear  such
weight.  As  Chief  Justice  Marshall  said  regarding  it,  no 
“great  substantive  and  independent  power”  can  be  “im-
plied as incidental to other powers, or used as a means of 
executing  them.”  McCulloch  v.  Maryland,  4  Wheat.  316, 
411  (1819);  see  Baude,  Rethinking  the  Federal  Eminent 
Domain  Power,  122  Yale  L. J.  1738,  1749–1755  (2013). 
No  law  that  flattens  the  principle  of  state  sovereignty,
whether or not “necessary,” can be said to be “proper.”  As 
an old, well-known treatise put it, “it would not be a proper
or  constitutional  exercise  of  the  treaty-making  power  to
provide  that  Congress  should  have  a  general  legislative 
authority over a subject which has not been given it by the
Constitution.”  1  W.  Willoughby,  The  Constitutional  Law 
of the United States §216, p. 504 (1910).

We  would  not  give  the  Government’s  support  of  the 
Holland principle the time of day were we confronted with 
“treaty-implementing” 
legislation  that  abrogated  the 
freedom of speech or some other constitutionally protected
individual  right.  We  proved  just  that  in  Reid  v.  Covert, 
354 U. S. 1 (1957), which held that commitments made in 
treaties  with  Great  Britain  and  Japan  would  not  permit
civilian  wives  of  American  servicemen  stationed  in  those