Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/13pdf/12-158_6579.pdf
Page Number: 36

12 

BOND v. UNITED STATES 

SCALIA, J., concurring in judgment 

and  obtaining  the  requisite  consent  of  the  Senate,  the 
President . . . may endow Congress with a source of legis-
lative authority independent of the powers enumerated in
Article  I.”  L.  Tribe,  American  Constitutional  Law  §4–4,
pp.  645–646  (3d  ed.  2000).    Though  Holland’s  change  to
the  Constitution’s  text  appears  minor  (the  power  to  carry
into  execution  the  power  to  make  treaties  becomes  the 
power  to  carry  into  execution  treaties),  the  change  to  its 
structure is seismic. 

To see why vast expansion of congressional power is not 
just  a  remote  possibility,  consider  two  features  of  the 
modern  practice  of  treaty  making.    In  our  Nation’s  early 
history,  and  extending  through  the  time  when  Holland 
was  written,  treaties  were  typically  bilateral,  and  ad-
dressed  only  a  small  range  of  topics  relating  to  the  obli-
gations  of  each  state  to  the  other,  and  to  citizens  of  the 
other—military neutrality, for example, or military alliance, 
or guarantee of most-favored-nation trade treatment.  See 
Bradley,  The  Treaty  Power  and  American  Federalism,  97 
Mich.  L. Rev.  390,  396  (1998).    But  beginning  in  the  last
half  of  the  last  century,  many  treaties  were  “detailed
multilateral  instruments  negotiated  and  drafted  at  inter-
national  conferences,”  ibid.,  and  they  sought  to  regulate
states’ treatment of their own citizens, or even “the activi-
ties  of  individuals  and  private  entities,”  A.  Chayes  &  A. 
Chayes,  The  New  Sovereignty:  Compliance  with  Interna-
tional  Regulatory  Agreements  14  (1995).    “[O]ften  vague
and  open-ended,”  such  treaties  “touch  on  almost  every 
aspect of domestic civil, political, and cultural life.”  Brad-
ley  &  Goldsmith,  Treaties,  Human  Rights,  and  Condi-
tional Consent, 149 U. Pa. L. Rev. 399, 400 (2000). 

Consider  also  that,  at  least  according  to  some  scholars,
the  Treaty  Clause  comes  with  no  implied  subject-matter
limitations.   See,  e.g.,  L.  Henkin,  Foreign  Affairs  and  the 
United States Constitution 191, 197 (2d ed. 1996); but see 
Bradley,  supra,  at  433–439.  On  this  view,  “[t]he  Tenth