Court Opinion

ID: 9517372
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 00:15:01.459515+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:44:00.150979
License: Public Domain

*554Black, J.
(concurring). I agree with and have endorsed the opinion Justice Swainson has prepared, yet would step a bit farther.
In the majestic phrasing of the Doxology, the supremacy clause* was from the beginning and is now really regnant. Its prospective force and effect upon the states, and “the Judges in every State,” came to conception and birth when Michigan was both trackless and primeval. Binding us now, as in 1930 when People v. Chosa, 252 Mich 154 came to judicial attention, it says imperatively that “all Treates made” — along with the other components therein listed — “shall be the supreme Law of the Land.” Now as in Ghosa the same treaty of 1854 is before us, along with the same appeal to its overriding impact.
Today we find definitely that this same treaty of 1854 provided and now provides “a specific condition of enjoyment of the reservation” which to this day tolerates no challenge by Michigan and the courts of Michigan. No like finding, and no opposing finding, was made by the Ghosa Court. Irrelevant reasons only were assigned for refusal to support the treaty-stipulated right of Ghosa and Attikons to hunt and fish on the reservation. See pages 160 and 161 of Ghosa’s report.
In that setting People v. Chosa was released to our books a little over 40 years ago. This Court attempted then in contravention of the treaty and the supremacy clause to interpose subordinate interests of the state, and the never exercised revocatory power of the President, to block the enforcement of that treaty. This was something more than judicial error. It was pure nullity.
There is no occasion for overrulement or distinguishment of Ghosa. It never became law in the first *555place, both its judgment and the statute applied there having spent their whole force in the utterance of worthless words. People v. Chosa was, when handed down December 2, 1930, like the earth before it was made, “without form, and void.” (Genesis ch. 1:2.)
T. G. Kavanagh, J., did not sit in this case.

 Article 6(2), Constitution of the United States.