Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/13pdf/12-158_6579.pdf
Page Number: 35.0

Cite as:  572 U. S. ____ (2014) 

11 

SCALIA, J., concurring in judgment 

make  the  treaty—here,  the  Chemical  Weapons  Conven-
tion—“into Execution”?  In any number of ways.  It could 
have  appropriated  money  for  hiring  treaty  negotiators, 
empowered  the  Department  of  State  to  appoint  those 
negotiators,  formed  a  commission  to  study  the  benefits
and  risks  of  entering  into  the  agreement,  or  paid  for  a
bevy of spies to monitor the treaty-related deliberations of 
other potential signatories.  See G. Lawson & G. Seidman, 
The  Constitution  of  Empire:  Territorial  Expansion  and 
American  Legal  History  63  (2004).    The  Necessary  and 
Proper  Clause  interacts  similarly  with  other  Article  II 
powers:  “[W]ith  respect  to  the  executive  branch,  the 
Clause  would  allow  Congress  to  institute  an  agency  to
help  the  President  wisely  employ  his  pardoning  power 
. . . .  Most important, the Clause allows Congress to estab-
lish officers to assist the President in exercising his ‘execu-
tive Power.’ ”  Calabresi & Prakash, The President’s Power 
to Execute the Laws, 104 Yale L. J. 541, 591 (1994). 

But a power to help the President make treaties is not a 
power to implement treaties already made.  See generally
Rosenkranz,  Executing  the  Treaty  Power,  118  Harv. 
L. Rev.  1867  (2005).    Once  a  treaty  has  been  made,  Con-
gress’s  power  to  do  what  is  “necessary  and  proper”  to
assist the making of treaties drops out of the picture.  To 
legislate compliance with the United States’ treaty obliga-
tions,  Congress  must  rely  upon  its  independent  (though
quite robust) Article I, §8, powers. 

B.  Structure 

“[T]he Constitutio[n] confer[s] upon Congress . . . not all 
governmental  powers,  but  only  discrete,  enumerated 
ones.”  Printz v. United States, 521 U. S. 898, 919 (1997). 
And,  of  course,  “enumeration  presupposes  something  not
enumerated.”  Gibbons  v.  Ogden,  9  Wheat.  1,  195  (1824).
  But  in  Holland,  the  proponents  of  unlimited  congres-
sional  power  found  a  loophole:  “By  negotiating  a  treaty