Opinion ID: 767955
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Treaties' Texts

Text: 27 In construing a treaty, as in construing a statute, we first look to its terms to determine its meaning. United States v. Alvarez-Machain, 504 U.S. 655, 665 (1992); see also Eastern Airlines, Inc. v. Floyd, 499 U.S. 530, 534 (1991); Volkswagenwerk Aktiengesellschaft v. Schlunk, 486 U.S. 694, 699 (1988); Marquez-Ramos v. Reno, 69 F.3d 477, 480 (10th Cir. 1995); Kreimerman v. Casa Veerkamp, S.A. de C.V., 22 F.3d 634, 638 (5th Cir. 1994). But the Vienna Convention and the Bilateral Convention are both facially ambiguous on the subject of whether they create individual rights at all, and do not even address whether those rights would justify suppression of evidence or the dismissal of an indictment. First, it is far from clear that the Vienna Convention confers any rights upon criminal defendants. Cf. Breard v. Greene, 118 S. Ct. 1352, 1356 (1998) ([N]either the text nor the history of the Vienna Convention clearly provides a... right of action in United States' courts to set aside a criminal conviction and sentence for violation of consular notification provisions.). The appellants emphasize the privileges purportedly conferred by Article 36, but the Vienna Convention's preamble explicitly disclaims any attempt to create individual rights: [T]he purpose of such privileges and immunities [as are created by the treaty] is not to benefit individuals but to ensure the efficient performance of functions by consular posts. Preamble to Vienna Convention, 21 U.S.T. 77, 79. Moreover, the preamble's drafters cite an intent to contribute to the development of friendly relations among nations without ever mentioning any intent to equip defendants with the extraordinary remedies sought by appellants. Id. 28 The Bilateral Convention, too, is ambiguous. Article 35 is replete with references to consular officers' entitlements, see Bilateral Convention arts. 35(1), 35(4), 35(5), 35(6), but only once speaks of the rights of detained nationals, and never proposes any particular remedies for the violation of any such rights. Article 35(3) reads as follows: 29 The competent authorities of the receiving state shall immediately inform the national of the sending State of the rights accorded to him by this Article to communicate with a consular official. 30 This language, however, offers insufficient support for appellants' arguments. Even if we were to hold that Article 35(3) in fact provided individuals with judicially enforceable rights -- and we decline to so hold in this case -- this language hardly justifies the inference that violation of such rights should be remedied via the suppression of evidence or the dismissal of an indictment. As described above, these remedies are reserved for extraordinary encroachments upon the most fundamental individual rights. Nothing in Article 35(3) of the Bilateral Convention suggests that the rights to which it refers are at all comparable to the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, the privilege against self-incrimination, or the right to representation during a criminal proceeding. 31 Indeed, the balance of Article 35 clearly mitigates any focus on the individual that section (3) might suggest. Even those provisions that arguably serve the interests of criminal defendants are couched instead in terms of the interests of the consular officer. Thus, for example, Article 35(1) provides that [a] consular officer shall be entitled... to communicate and meet with any national of the sending State, and Article 35(4) states that [a] consular officer shall be entitled to visit a national of the sending State who has been arrested. We believe that if the authors of the Bilateral Convention intended Article 35 to confer fundamental individual rights of the sort that could be remedied by suppression or dismissal, they would have drafted that Article in terms of those rights, rather than focusing so intently upon the entitlements of consular officers -- officers whose protections under such a clause would be far less reaching than those of criminal detainees.