Opinion ID: 799258
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Interpreting Holland

Text: Because Holland clearly instructs that there can be no dispute about the validity of [a] statute that implements a valid treaty, 252 U.S. at 432, 40 S.Ct. 382, the constitutionality of Bond's prosecution would seem to turn on whether the Act goes beyond what is necessary and proper to carry the Convention into effect, or, in other words, whether the Act fails to bear a rational relationship to the Convention, Lue, 134 F.3d at 84. According to Bond, however, only a simplistic reading of Holland could lead one to think that the Supreme Court was saying that Congress's power to implement treaties is subject to no limit other than affirmative restrictions on government power like the First Amendment. (Appellant's Supp. Reply Br. at 9-10.) The problem with Bond's attack is that, with practically no qualifying language in Holland to turn to, we are bound to take at face value the Supreme Court's statement that [i]f the treaty is valid there can be no dispute about the validity of the statute ... as a necessary and proper means to execute the powers of the Government. 252 U.S. at 432, 40 S.Ct. 382. A plurality of the Supreme Court itself apparently gave that passage the simplistic reading Bond denounces when it said, in Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1, 77 S.Ct. 1222, 1 L.Ed.2d 1148 (1957), that: The Court [in Holland ] was concerned with the Tenth Amendment which reserves to the States or the people all power not delegated to the National Government. To the extent that the United States can validly make treaties, the people and the States have delegated their power to the National Government and the Tenth Amendment is no barrier. Id. at 18, 77 S.Ct. 1222. It is true that Justice Holmes spoke later in Holland in language that implies a balancing of the national interest against the interest claimed by the State, see Holland, 252 U.S. at 435, 40 S.Ct. 382 (Here a national interest of very nearly the first magnitude is involved.), but that was in the context of assessing the validity of the Migratory Bird Treaty itself, not the implementing statute. That the latter was constitutional in light of the validity of the former seemed to the Supreme Court to require no further comment at all. [15] That does not mean, of course, that the Holland court would have spoken in the same unqualified terms had it foreseen the late Twentieth Century's changing claims about the limits of the Treaty Power, or had it been faced with a treaty that transgressed the traditional subject matter limitation. [16] See id. at 433, 40 S.Ct. 382 (The case before us must be considered in light of our whole experience and not merely in that of what was said a hundred years ago.). It may well have chosen to say more about how to assess the validity of a treaty, and hence of coextensive treaty-implementing legislation. Perhaps Holland 's vague comment about invisible radiation[s] from the general terms of the Tenth Amendment, id. at 434, 40 S.Ct. 382. would have been given some further explication. As we have previously described, when Holland was decided, and, more importantly, when the Founders created the Treaty Power, it was generally understood that treaties should concern only matters that were clearly international in character, matters which, in Holland 's words, invoke a national interest that can be protected only by national action in concert with that of another [sovereign nation]. Id. at 435, 40 S.Ct. 382. All the authors of The Federalist Papers, along with others from that era, considered the Treaty Power to be a necessary attribute of the central government for the important but limited purpose of permitting our intercourse with foreign nations, The Virginia Debates, supra, at 514 (statement of James Madison), and thereby allowing for compacts especially as [they] relate[] to war, peace, and commerce, The Federalist No. 64 (John Jay); see supra Part II.B.1. It was not a general and unlimited grant of power to the federal government. [17] Because an implied subject matter limitation on the Treaty Power was a given at the time Holland was written, it was enough to answer the states' rights question in that case by pointing out that the Tenth Amendment only reserves those powers that are not delegated and that the power to make treaties is delegated expressly. 252 U.S. at 432, 40 S.Ct. 382. Thus, Holland 's statement that there can be no dispute about the validity of a statute implementing a valid treaty, id., is sensible in context and, in any event, binds us. We do not discount the significance of the Supreme Court's emphasis on the important role that federalism plays in preserving individual rights, Bond II, 131 S.Ct. at 2364, and it may be that there is more to say about the uncompromising language used in Holland than we are able to say, [18] but that very direct language demands from us a direct acknowledgement of its meaning, even if the result may be viewed as simplistic. If there is nuance there that has escaped us, it is for the Supreme Court to elucidate.