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Page Number: 5.0

2 

BOND v. UNITED STATES 

Opinion of the Court 

treaties,  ratified  the  treaty  in  1997.  To  fulfill  the  United 
States’  obligations  under  the  Convention,  Congress  en- 
acted  the  Chemical  Weapons  Convention  Implementation
Act of 1998.  The Act makes it a federal crime for a person
to  use  or  possess  any  chemical  weapon,  and  it  punishes 
violators  with  severe  penalties.    It  is  a  statute  that,  like 
the Convention it implements, deals with crimes of deadly 
seriousness. 

The  question  presented  by  this  case  is  whether  the
Implementation  Act  also  reaches  a  purely  local  crime:  an
amateur  attempt  by  a  jilted  wife  to  injure  her  husband’s
lover,  which  ended  up  causing  only  a  minor  thumb  burn
readily treated by rinsing with water.  Because our consti-
tutional  structure  leaves  local  criminal  activity  primarily
to  the  States,  we  have  generally  declined  to  read  federal 
law  as  intruding  on  that  responsibility,  unless  Congress
has clearly indicated that the law should have such reach.
The  Chemical  Weapons  Convention  Implementation  Act 
contains  no  such  clear  indication,  and  we  accordingly
conclude  that  it  does  not  cover  the  unremarkable  local 
offense at issue here. 

I 

A 

In  1997,  the  President  of  the  United  States,  upon  the 
advice and  consent of the Senate, ratified the Convention 
on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stock-
piling,  and  Use  of  Chemical  Weapons  and  on  Their  De-
struction.  S. Treaty Doc. No. 103–21, 1974 U. N. T. S. 317.  
The  nations  that  ratified  the  Convention  (State  Parties) 
had  bold  aspirations  for  it:  “general  and  complete  dis-
armament under strict and effective international control, 
including  the  prohibition  and  elimination  of  all  types  of 
weapons of mass destruction.”  Convention Preamble, ibid. 
This purpose traces its origin to World War I, when “[o]ver 
a million casualties, up to 100,000 of them fatal, are esti-