Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/13pdf/12-158_6579.pdf
Page Number: 53

12 

BOND v. UNITED STATES 

THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment 

must  relate  to  intercourse  with  other  nations.    The  Jay
Treaty,  for  example,  altered  state  property  law,  but  only
with respect to British subjects, who could hold and devise
real  property  in  the  United  States  “in  like  manner  as  if 
they  were  natives.”    Art. IX,  8  Stat.  122.    An  1815  treaty
with  Great  Britain  was  held  to  pre-empt  a  state  law  au-
thorizing the seizure of “ ‘free negroes or persons of color’ ” 
at  ports  in  part  because  the  state  law  applied  to  British 
sailors.  See Elkison v. Deliesseline, 8 F. Cas. 493, 495 (No.
4,  366)  (CC  SC  1823)  (Johnson,  Circuit  Justice).    And 
treaties with China and Japan, which afforded subjects of
those  countries  the  same  rights  and  privileges  as  citizens
of  other  nations,  were  understood  to  pre-empt  state  laws 
that discriminated against Chinese and Japanese subjects. 
See,  e.g.,  Baker  v.  Portland,  2  F. Cas.  472,  474  (No.  777) 
(CC Ore. 1879).  Cf. Brief for United States 29, 33–38. 

The  postratification  theory  and  practice  of  treaty-
making  accordingly  confirms  the  understanding  that
treaties  by  their  nature  relate  to  intercourse  with  other 
nations (including their people and property), rather than
to purely domestic affairs. 

III 
The  original  understanding  that  the  Treaty  Power  was
limited  to  international  intercourse  has  been  well  repre-
sented  in  this  Court’s  precedents.    Although  we  have  not 
had  occasion  to  define  the  limits  of  the  power  in  much 
detail,  we  have  described  treaties  as  dealing  in  some
  See,  e.g., 
manner  with  intercourse  between  nations.
Holmes v. Jennison, 14 Pet. 540, 569 (1840) (“The power to
make  treaties  . . .  was  designed  to  include  all  those  sub-
jects,  which  in  the  ordinary  intercourse  of  nations  had 
—————— 

apply  to  Congress’s  legislative  powers”),  with  Golove  1077  (arguing 
treaties  can  address  “subjects  that  are  otherwise  beyond  Congress’s 
legislative powers”).