Court Opinion

ID: 9431652
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:32:50.900876+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:29.471744
License: Public Domain

*136Justice Brennan,
with whom Justice Marshall, Justice Blackmun, and Justice Stevens join,
concurring in the judgment.
If I may paraphrase Justice Harlan: I agree that the interpretation of the Warsaw Convention advanced by petitioners should be rejected, but I consider it entitled to a more respectful burial than has been accorded.1 Over the last 25 years, petitioners’ argument has been accepted, until the present litigation, by virtually every court in this country that has considered it. One such judgment was affirmed here by an equally divided Court. It is a view of the Convention that has consistently been adopted by the Executive Branch, and which is pressed on us in this case by the United States as amicus curiae. It deserves at least to be stated in full, and to be considered without the self-affixed blindfold that prevents the Court from examining anything beyond the treaty language itself.
The Court holds that the sanction of Article 3(2), which consists of the loss of the Convention’s limitation on liability under Article 22(1), applies only when no passenger ticket at all is delivered. That is a plausible reading, perhaps even the most plausible reading of the language of the Convention. But it is disingenuous to say that it is the only possible reading. Certainly it is wrong to disregard the wealth of evidence to be found in the Convention’s drafting history on the intent of the governments that drafted the document. It is altogether proper that we consider such extrinsic evidence of the treatymakers’ intent. See Air France v. Saks, 470 U. S. 392, 396, 400 (1985); Société Nationale Industrielle Aerospatiale v. United States District Court, 482 U. S. 522, 534 (1987); Volkswagenwerk Aktiengesellschaft v. Schlunk, 486 U. S. 694, 700-702 (1988). The drafters of an international treaty generally are, of course, the instructed representatives of the governments that ultimately ratify the *137treaty. The record of their negotiations can provide helpful clues to those governments’ collective intent, as it took shape during the negotiating process.2
There is strong evidence that the drafters of the Warsaw Convention may have meant something other than what the Court thinks that document says. In the first place, the text of the Convention is surely susceptible of an interpretation other than the Court’s. Article 3(1) describes as follows what it is the carrier must deliver: “[A] passenger ticket which shall contain the following particulars . . . .” I think it not at all unreasonable to read the term “passenger ticket,” when used subsequently in Article 3(2), as shorthand for this longer phrase. The first sentence of Article 3(2), moreover, quite dearly does not have the meaning the Court ascribes to it. Ante, at 128. That sentence provides that the “absence, irregularity, or loss” of a ticket shall not affect the validity of the contract, “which shall none the less be subject to the rules of this convention.” Those rules include the one laid down in the very next sentence, i. e., the provision for loss of the liability limitation. Thus, there exists a contract even if the ticket is absent or “irregular,” and that contract is still governed by all of the provisions of the Convention, one of which denies the carrier the benefit of the liability limit under cer*138tain conditions.3 The intent of Article 3(2), as a whole, is surely to hold the carrier to the obligations, but to deny it the benefits, of the Convention, if it fails to comply with certain requirements.4
Thus, the language of Article 3 does not, to say the least, exclude the interpretation that failure to provide the required notice results in loss of the limitation on liability.5 On the other hand, the difference between the language of Article 3 and that of Articles 4 and 9 casts some doubt on that *139reading. Evidence from the drafting history of the Convention is therefore helpful in understanding what the contracting governments intended.
The Convention was drafted between the first and second international conferences on private aviation law, held, respectively, in Paris in 1925 and Warsaw in 1929. The drafting work was done by a committee of experts, CITEJA, and particularly by the committee’s Second Commission, during a series of meetings in 1927 and 1928. See generally M. Smirnoff, Le Comité International Technique d’Experts Juridiques Aériens (1936). The text CITEJA presented at the Second International Conference on Private Aviation Law in Warsaw in 1929 was amended in a number of respects before its adoption and submission to the several governments for ratification. Without tracing the evolution of the draft convention in detail, several important themes can be discerned from CITEJA’s drafts and minutes.
First, it is abundantly clear that throughout the entire drafting process the delegates intended to apply the same regime of sanctions for failure to comply with the provisions concerning passenger tickets, baggage checks, and air waybills. The initial object of CITEJA’s work was the preparation of a convention on the air waybill for the transport of freight. In this phase, its draft contained the requirement that the waybill include various “particulars” (Article 7), as well as a statement that the transportation was subject to the Convention’s rules relating to liability (Article 8). The sanction for failure to comply was clear: “If an air waybill containing all the particulars set out in Article 7(a) through (g) and by Article 8 has not been made out for international transportation, the carrier shall still be subject to the rules of the International Convention on liability, but the carrier shall not be entitled to avail himself of those provisions of this Convention that exclude his own liability, release him from responsibility for the errors of his agents, or limit his liability.” U. S. App. 43a-44a, 55a-56a.
*140Subsequently, CITEJA determined to merge the air waybill convention with proposed modifications to an international liability convention adopted in 1925. Id., at 46a, 58a. At the third session of CITEJA in May 1928, the Second Commission presented a draft convention which, in its Article 3, contained provisions similar to those foreseen for the air waybill in the previous draft. Thus, the passenger ticket was to include four listed particulars, as well as “a statement that the transportation is subject to the rules relating to liability established by this Convention.” The same Article, as amended during the session, provided: “If, for international transportation, the carrier accepts a passenger without a passenger ticket having been made out, or if the ticket does not contain the above-mentioned particulars, the contract is still subject to the rules of this Convention, but the carrier shall not be entitled to avail himself of those provisions of this convention which totally or partially exclude his direct liability or liability derived from the negligence of his agents.” Id., at 72a, 91a.6 Similar provisions were adopted in regard to the baggage check. See id., at 76a-77a, 95a-96a. The report submitted by Henry de Vos, Reporter of the Second Committee, to the full CITEJA, made crystal clear the parallelism of approach adopted for the three types of transportation documents: “[T]he sanction for transporting passengers without regular tickets is the same as that for the transportation of baggage and of goods.” Id., at 73a, 92a. Similarly, the report Monsieur de Vos prepared on behalf of CITEJA to accompany its final draft of the Convention contained the following observation: “[T]he sanction provided ... for carriage of passengers without a ticket or with a ticket not conforming *141to the Convention is identical to that provided . . . for carriage of baggage and goods.” Second International Conference on Private Aeronautical Law Minutes 247 (R. Horner & D. Legrez transí. 1975) (emphasis added) (hereinafter Horner & Legrez).7
A second observation that can be drawn from the drafting history relates to the purpose of the sanctions clause. This was simply the means chosen by the drafters to compel the air carriers to include on the transportation documents certain “particulars” thought necessary. During the initial stages the drafters had considered requiring the adhering states to impose criminal or civil penalties for failure to comply with the Convention’s specifications, but they ultimately accepted a British suggestion that loss of the Convention’s benefits should be used as the means of compelling compliance. U. S. App. 35a-36a, 47a-49a, 42a, 54a-55a, 63a, 82a-83a. Thus, the sanction was applied to the failure to include on the transportation documents all of the particulars thought to be essential, but not to certain others whose inclusion was merely recommended. The term “obligatory” was frequently used to refer to the former group. The obligatory particulars were, generally speaking, those relating to the international character of the transportation. Id., at 41a, 54a. These included “[t]he name and address of the carrier.” Id., at 43a, 55a. One might today deem that particular unnecessary to demonstrate the international character of the transportation, but that was apparently not the judgment of the drafters, who debated precisely this sort of question, id., at 62a-64a, 82a-83a, and who saw the severe penalty as being the only practicable means of compelling the carriers to include on the travel documents the particulars the drafters considered essential. (The carrier’s address might also have been thought necessary to establish the carrier’s domicile for *142jurisdictional purposes under Article 28.) Thus, what the Court considers an “absurd resul[t],” ante, at 130, was one precisely intended (at least until the draft reached the Conference floor) by the authors of the Warsaw Convention.
Several conclusions can be drawn from the final draft CITEJA submitted to the Warsaw Conference. First, it is absolutely clear that under this draft the carrier was to lose the benefit of the liability limitation if it delivered a passenger ticket that did not contain the listed particulars. See Horner & Legrez 258 (“If. . . the carrier accepts the traveler without having drawn up a passenger ticket, or if the ticket does not contain the particulars indicated hereabove . . .”) (emphasis added). What is somewhat less clear is whether the clause stipulating that the transportation was subject to the liability provisions of the Warsaw Convention was among those “particulars.” Article 3 referred to “the particulars indicated hereabove”; and while the clause in question was mentioned just above, it was not listed under a letter of the alphabet like the others, but was in a separate paragraph.8 *143The parallel provision of Article 4, on the baggage check, was even more ambiguous on this point: while there, too, the liability clause was referred to in a separate paragraph, following particulars lettered (a) through (f), the penalty provision referenced only the failure to issue a ticket that included particulars (a) through (d).9 The provisions on the air waybill, on the other hand, specified clearly that failure to include the liability statement would result in loss of the liability limit.10
*144At Warsaw, the Japanese delegation, recognizing the just-mentioned ambiguity, proposed an amendment to Articles 3 and 4, which resulted in the reordering of the liability clause as a lettered “particular.” The purpose of the change was to make clear that the liability clause was to be treated as obligatory, Horner & Legrez 310, i. e., that its omission would result in loss of the limit on liability. This amendment was apparently regarded merely as a technical question of wording, id., at 272, and it engendered no floor discussion. Had only this amendment been adopted, it would have been clear beyond doubt that failure to include the required statement on the passenger ticket would result in loss of the liability limit. But a second relevant amendment was also adopted, and it produced a much more ambiguous document.
Throughout CITEJA’s work on the draft Convention, the Greek delegation had repeatedly objected to the sanctions clause as too harsh. U. S. App. 39a, 51a; 62a-64a, 82a-83a. Its effort at the May 1928 CITEJA meeting to weaken the sanction, by specifying that it should apply only when prejudice was caused by the omission of a particular, was rejected. Id., at 63a-64a, 83a. But at Warsaw, for reasons which do not emerge from the record, a similar Greek amendment, Horner & Legrez 303-304, met with more success. The preparatory committee accepted it to the extent of deleting from Article 3(2) the words, “or if the ticket does not contain the particulars indicated above.” Id., at 150.11 The parallel *145provision in Article 4 was treated somewhat differently. A change was made in which particulars were deemed obligatory, but three — including the liability statement which became particular (h) — remained so; thus, the phrase used in the sanctions clause was “or if the baggage check does not contain the particulars set out at (d), (f), and (h) above.” Id., at 156. Articles 8 and 9, concerning the air waybill, were rewritten in a similar fashion. Id,., at 157-162.
It is not clear what the reason is for the difference between the final structure of Article 3, on one hand, and Articles 4 and 9, on the other. The Solicitor General views it essentially as a drafting error, resulting from a failure to coordinate the Japanese and Greek amendments. Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 18-21. It is, to be sure, possible that the drafters intended to create a different regime for the passenger ticket than for the baggage check and the air waybill. The latter reading draws some support from the Reporter’s explanation of the changes made in Article 4 concerning the baggage check: “The last paragraph was not modified like Article 3; that is to say that we have retained the same sanctions in the case of errors in the particulars . . . .” Horner & Legrez 156. But it is puzzling that such a departure from the fundamental principle of applying the same scheme of sanctions to the passenger ticket, the baggage check, and the waybill would have been made without explanation or acknowledgment. As late as the opening substantive session of the Warsaw Conference itself the CITEJA Reporter, Monsieur de Vos, made clear, as he had at the foregoing CITEJA sessions, the principle of parallel treatment of these three documents.12 Only four days later *146Monsieur de Vos himself presented to the convention the preparatory committee’s revision of Article 3; and it is difficult to imagine that, had such a fundamental change on this point been intended, he would not have said so explicitly.
An examination of the Greek proposal that led to the change, as well as what Monsieur de Vos said in presenting it, strengthens the impression that no different treatment of the passenger ticket was intended. The Greek proposal referred to the possibility that the carrier might lose its liability limitation because “by simple negligence the carrier has omitted to mention in the passenger ticket the place of issuance, or the point of departure, or his name and address; or even that he keep his former address in the ticket, or finally he does not point out an intermediate stop.” Horner & Legrez 303. The Reporter, in presenting the revision of Article 3 to the plenary session, characterized the Greek concern as follows: “[T]he sanction is too severe when it’s a question of a simple omission, of the negligence of an employee of the carrier . . . .” Id., at 150. The focus thus appears to have been on clerical errors in filling in the ticket forms. An intent to remove such errors from the list of those that trigger the sanction — as was done also in Article 4 (but not in Article 8) — would not be incompatible with the intent to retain the sanction for failure to include the liability statement, which would hardly result from the same kind of ticket-counter error.
While the record that has been preserved makes it impossible to say with certainty what the treatymakers at Warsaw intended, the explanation that they contemplated only the removal of the four initial particulars from the scope of the sanctions clause finds considerable support in the available evidence. Since at the time the Greek amendment was discussed the liability statement constituted a separate paragraph, rather than being listed as letter (e) as it later was, it *147is conceivable that the preparatory committee removed the words “or if the ticket does not contain the particulars indicated above,” without intending to make the liability statement any less obligatory here than in Articles 4 and 9.
The Court offers several hypotheses as to why the drafters of the Convention might have determined to treat the notice requirement differently for the passenger ticket and the baggage check. Ante, at 133-134. Such explanations are, however, difficult to square with the actual history of the Convention’s drafting. The final text clearly imposes sanctions for omission of the notice in Article 4, whereas Article 3 is ambiguous on this point; but this was not the case in the draft CITEJA presented to the conference. There, if anything, the sanction applied more clearly to the failure to give notice under Article 3 than under Article 4. Supra, at 142-143. If there was any reason, therefore, for according the notice requirement less weight in Article 3 than in Article 4, it must have emerged at the Warsaw Conference itself. But there is no trace of such a purpose in the Warsaw minutes, as there surely would have been had a decision been made to reverse the relative treatment of the Article 3 and 4 sanctions provisions in the previous draft. It seems much more likely, therefore, that the difference between Articles 3 and 4 on this point was an unintended consequence of other changes that were made at the conference.13
*148Even if we agree, however, that Article 3 of the Warsaw Convention removes the liability limit for failure to provide notice that the transportation is governed by the Convention’s liability provisions,14 that does not end the matter. *149Respondent Korean Air Lines undeniably did give petitioners such notice. Petitioners’ argument goes beyond this, however, and requires us to determine whether there exists a requirement that the notice given be “adequate,” and, if so, whether the notice provided in this case met that standard.
Courts in this country have generally read an “adequate notice” requirement into the Warsaw Convention. Thus, notice has been held to be inadequate when it was provided under conditions that did not permit the passenger to act on it (by, for example, purchasing additional insurance). Mertens v. Flying Tiger Line, Inc., 341 F. 2d 851, 856-858 (CA2) (ticket delivered after passenger boarded airplane), cert. denied, 382 U. S. 816 (1965); Warren v. Flying Tiger Line, Inc., 352 F. 2d 494 (CA9 1965) (ticket delivered at foot of ramp to airplane). Closer to the present situation is the much-noted case of Lisi v. Alitalia-Linee Aeree Italiane, S. p. A., 370 F. 2d 508 (CA2 1966), aff’d by equally divided Court, 390 U. S. 455 (1968). There the court characterized the Warsaw Convention notice given by the carrier in 4-point type as “camouflaged in Lilliputian print in a thicket of ‘Conditions of Contract’” and as “virtually invisible.” 370 F. 2d, at 514. The court therefore held that the ticket had not been “‘delivered tp the passenger in such a manner as to afford him a reasonable opportunity to take self-protective measures ....’” Id., at 513, quoting Mertens, supra, at 857. More recently two appellate courts, relying on the Montreal Agreement, have held notice in 8.5-point and 9-point type to be inadequate. In re Air Crash Disaster at Warsaw, Poland, on March 14,1980, 705 F. 2d 85 (CA2), cert. denied sub nom. Polskie Linie Lotnicze v. Robles, 464 U. S. 845 (1983); In re Air Crash Disaster Near New Orleans, Louisiana, on July 9,1982, 789 F. 2d 1092, 1098 (CA5), rehearing granted, *150795 F. 2d 381 (1986) (en banc), reinstated, 821 F. 2d 1147, 1171 (1987) (en banc).
If notice is indeed required, it must surely meet some minimal standard of “adequacy.” All would agree, no doubt, that notice that literally could be read only with a magnifying glass would be no notice at all. Lisi, of course, presents a more difficult case. In my view it may well have been correctly decided. But there is a substantial difference between 4-point and 8-point type, particularly where, as here, the notice took the form of the “advice” prescribed by the Montreal Agreement and occupied a separate page in the ticket book. It cannot be said that the notice given here was “camouflaged in Lilliputian print in a thicket of [other conditions].”
The Warsaw and New Orleans courts did not, of course, find that to be the case where notice was given in 8.5- and 9-point type. Rather, those courts adopted a bright-line rule based on the provision of the Montreal Agreement that requires notice printed in 10-point type. Petitioners here similarly contend that the Montreal Agreement established a bright line which should be taken to define what notice is adequate. I cannot accept this argument. The Montreal Agreement is a private agreement among airline companies, which cannot and does not purport to amend the Warsaw Convention. To be sure, the Agreement was concluded under pressure from the United States Government, which would otherwise have withdrawn from the Warsaw Convention. See Lowenfeld & Mendelsohn, The United States and the Warsaw Convention, 80 Harv. L. Rev. 497, 546-596 (1967). And most air carriers operating in the United States are required by Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Regulations to become parties to the agreement. See 14 CFR pt. 203, §213.7 (1988); see also 14 CFR §221.175(a) (1988) (requiring notice of liability limit in 10-point type). But neither the Montreal Agreement nor the federal regulations purport to sanction failure to provide notice according to the Agreement’s specifications with loss of the Warsaw *151Convention’s limits on liability. The sanction, rather, can be only whatever penalty is available to the FAA against foreign airlines that fail to abide by the applicable regulations, presumably including suspension or revocation of the airline’s permit to operate in the United States. See 49 U. S. C. App. § 1372(f).15
Nor does the Solicitor General contend in this case that the Montreal Agreement provides for loss of the liability limit in the event of failure to give the specified notice in 10-point type. His argument is, rather, that the Montreal Agreement and the FAA regulation codified at 14 CFR §221.175(a) (1988) set a clear and reasonable standard which the courts should adopt as a measure of “adequate notice.” Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 24-27. Here, however, the notice given was surely “adequate” under any conventional interpretation of that term. That being so, I cannot agree that we have any license to require that the notice meet some higher standard, merely for the sake of a bright line.16
*152This case is, in my view, far more complex and difficult than the Court would have it. I am prepared to accept petitioners’ position that the Warsaw Convention does sanction failure to provide notice of its applicability with loss of its limit on liability. Having come that far, I think one must agree as well that notice that is not minimally legible, at the least, is no notice at all. But I cannot make the leap from there to the view that KAL’s 8-point notice was inadequate, as a matter of interpretation of the Warsaw Convention, simply because of the carrier’s obligation under a related agreement to provide 10-point notice. I therefore concur in the Court’s judgment that respondent has not lost the benefit of the Convention’s limit on liability because of the size of the type used in its notice.

 Cf. Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U. S. 335, 349 (1963) (Harlan, J., concurring).

 Sometimes, of course, a state may become a party to an international convention only after it has entered into force, without having participated in its drafting. Thus, the United States was not represented at Warsaw and adhered to the Convention only in 1934. But to say that for that reason the drafting history of an international treaty may not be enlisted as an aid in its interpretation would be unnecessarily to forgo a valuable resource. We do not, after all, find it necessary to disregard the drafting history of our Constitution, notwithstanding that 37 of the 50 States played no role in the negotiations and debates that created it.
The United States Senate’s consent to the Warsaw Convention was given without any hearings or debate. See Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Franklin Mint Corp., 466 U. S. 243, 273 (1984) (Stevens, J., dissenting). There is, therefore, no issue in this case as to the proper use of preratification Senate materials in treaty interpretation. Cf. United States v. Stuart, 489 U. S. 353, 367-368, n. 7 (1989).

 Because I think the meaning of this sentence is clear, I must respectfully disagree with the position taken by the Supreme Court of Canada in Ludecke v. Canadian Pacific Airlines, Ltd., 98 D. L. R. 3d 52, 57 (1979), which was based on the same erroneous interpretation this Court now gives to the first sentence of Article 3(2).

 This intent, which emerges clearly from a careful reading of Article 3(2), is also apparent from the drafting history of the Convention. See, e. g., App. to Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 35a-37a, 47a-49a (hereinafter U. S. App.). (This and subsequent citations to the appendix to the Government’s brief are in pairs of page references: the first reference is to the original French document, and the second to an English translation provided by the Solicitor General.)

 The Court’s difficulty in accepting this point, see ante, at 129-130, n. 3, results precisely from the misplaced literalism and disregard of context already evident in its approach to this treaty. Without responding in detail to its literalist critique, I will say this: If one wades through the minutes of the Comité International Technique d’Experts Juridiques Aériens (CITEJA) meetings and of the Warsaw Conference, as well as the various drafts that were produced en route to the final Convention, one finds virtually no support for the Court’s theory of what Article 3 means. For the Court’s theory of the first sentence of Article 3(2) one finds absolutely none, and plenty that makes it most unlikely that the drafters intended the reading the Court gives. I set out some of this in the text below. For a starter, one might look at the draft of Article 3 presented to the Warsaw Conference, see n. 8, infra, where what are now the first and second sentences of Article 3(2) were in completely separate paragraphs, without any “[njevertheless.” Of course the Conference might have decided to make a substantive change, but one searches in vain through its minutes for any indication of such intent. I think it more likely that when the two paragraphs were combined in final drafting the word “[njevertheless” (“ioutefois”) was placed between them as a transition.

 As originally presented to CITEJA, the triggering clause read: “without a passenger ticket containing the particulars indicated above having been made out.” U. S. App. 62a, 82a. The change in language was made in order to exclude the interpretation that the transporter could escape from the obligations of the Convention simply by issuing no passenger ticket at all. See id., at 70a-71a, 90a-91a.

 The minutes of the Warsaw Conference are cited here in English translation. For the French original documents, see 2 Conférence Internationale de Droit Privé Aérien, 4-12 Octobre 1929, Varsovie (1930).

 Article 3, as presented to the conference by CITEJA, read as follows:
“In the carriage of travelers the carrier shall be required to deliver a passenger ticket which shall contain the following particulars:
“(a) the place and date of issue;
“(b) the points of departure and of destination;
“(c) summary indication of the route to be followed (via) as well as the contemplated stopping places;
“(d) the name and address of the carrier or carriers.
“The passenger ticket shall contain, moreover, a clause stipulating that the carriage is subject to the system of liability set forth by the present Convention.
“The absence, irregularity, or loss of this document of carriage shall not prejudice either the existence or the validity of the contract of carriage.
“If, for international carriage, the carrier accepts the traveler without having drawn up a passenger ticket, or if the ticket does not contain the particulars indicated hereabove, the contract of carriage shall nonetheless be subject to the rules of the present Convention, but the carrier shall not have the right to avail himself of the provisions of this Convention which *143exclude in all or in part his direct liability or that derived from the faults of his servants.” Horner & Legrez 258-259.

 Article 4, as presented to the conference, read as follows:
“In the carriage of baggage, other than small personal objects of which the passenger himself retains custody, the carrier shall deliver a baggage cheek.
“It shall contain the following particulars:
“(a) the place and date of issue;
“(b) the points of departure and of destination;
“(c) summary indication of the route to be followed (via) as well as the contemplated stopping places;
“(d) the name and address of the carrier or carriers;
“(e) the number of the passenger ticket;
“(f) indication that the check is made out in duplicate;
“(g) indication that the delivery of the baggage to the traveler shall be validly made to the bearer of the cheek.
“The baggage check shall contain, moreover, a clause stipulating that the carriage is subject to the system of liability set forth by the Convention.
“The absence, irregularity, or loss of this baggage check shall not prejudice either the existence or the validity of the contract of carriage.
“If, for international carriage, the carrier accepts baggage without having made out a ticket, or if the ticket does not contain the particulars indicated hereabove up to and including (d), the contract of the carriage shall nonetheless be subject to the rules of the present Convention, but the carrier shall not have the right to avail himself of the provisions of this Convention, which exclude in all or in part his direct liability or that derived from the faults of his servants.” Id., at 259.

 Article 8, as presented to the conference, specified 15 particulars the waybill was to contain, of which those lettered (a) through (g) were stated to be compulsory. A separate Article 9 read in full as follows: “The air waybill shall contain a clause stipulating that the carriage is subject to the *144system of liability set forth by the present Convention.” Finally, Article 17 provided: “If, for international carriage the carrier accepts goods without having made out an air waybill, or if the air waybill does not contain all the indications set forth by Article 8 (a) through (g) inclusive, and by Article 9, the contract of carriage shall nonetheless be subject to the rules of the present Convention, but the carrier shall not have the right to avail himself of the provisions of this Convention which exclude in all or in part his direct liability or that derived from his servants. ” Id., at 260-264 (emphasis added).

 Since the Greek amendment was classified as one of secondary importance, it was considered in the “preparatory committee,” which made no record of its debates, rather than on the floor. Thus, the only clues as to *145the reason for the change come from the wording of the Greek proposal and from the comments of the Reporter in presenting the preparatory committee’s work to the plenary session.

 “In Chapter 2, we examine the matter of transport documents: passenger ticket, baggage check, air waybill for goods. All these documents contain a minimum of particulars.
“The essential thing, in this regard, is the sanction, sanction provided for the three documents, which consists in depriving the carrier who would *146carry travelers or goods without documents or with documents not conforming to the Convention, of the benefit of the advantages provided by the Convention.” Horner & Legrez 19-20.

 There is an alternative explanation of the difference in language used in the Articles on the passenger ticket, baggage check, and waybill. The term “passenger ticket” can, as already noted, be read to refer to a ticket that contains all of the particulars listed in Article 3(1) (i. e., including the first four, which establish the international character of the transportation). This appears to be the interpretation of Y. Blanc-Dannery, La Convention de Varsovie et les Regies du Transport Aérien International 23-37 (1933). She states flatly: “Article 3 makes no distinction among the particulars: ‘the carrier must deliver a passenger ticket which shall contain the following particulars.’ Stated differently, all are obligatory.” Id., at 28 (translation mine). This is also the conclusion reached by the Quebec Court of Appeal in Lndecke v. Canadian Pacific Airlines, Ltd., 53 D. L. R. 3d 636, 638 (1974) (“[T]he carrier must deliver a ticket which sat*148isfies the mandatory requirements of art. 3(1) which article is in effect, a definition. If the ticket delivered does not satisfy these requirements it is not a ticket within the meaning of that article and the sanction of art. 3(2) will apply”), appeal dism’d, 98 D. L. R. 3d 52 (Can. 1979). If “passenger ticket” is read in this manner, then it is also possible to understand the last-minute change in the status of the first four particulars listed in Article 4. See n. 9, supra. At the same time that these were made nonobligatory on the baggage check, mention of the number of the passenger ticket became an obligatory particular on the baggage check (now Article 4(3)(d)). This cross-reference to the passenger ticket may have been seen to make it unnecessary to require that the first four particulars listed there be repeated on the baggage check. This reading harmonizes the treatment of all three transportation documents in regard to these four particulars: they are obligatory in all three eases (this is undisputed in the ease of the waybill), although for the baggage cheek this is accomplished through incorporation by reference of the passenger ticket.
It should be noted, however, that other commentators take a different view. According to D. Goedhuis, National Airlegislations and the Warsaw Convention 152-153 (1937), the Greek amendment established a difference between the sanction provisions of Articles 3 and 4, and the carrier is not bound to include any particulars at all on the passenger ticket. See also G. Miller, Liability in International Air Transport 83, 92 (1977).

 In 1955 the Warsaw Convention was amended in a number of respects by the Hague Protocol. Notably, Article 3 was amended to make absolutely clear that the liability limit would not apply if the carrier did not give notice that the Convention’s liability limitations governed. See Article III, Protocol to Amend the Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules Relating to International Carriage by Air Signed at Warsaw on 12 October 1929, 478 U. N. T. S. 371, 374-377 (1955). Had the United States ratified the Hague Protocol, its amendments would have been dispositive of the question we have been discussing thus far. It did not do so, however, largely because of dissatisfaction with the Convention’s low liability limit, even as doubled by the Hague amendments. See Lowenfeld & Mendelsohn, The United States and the Warsaw Convention, 80 Harv. L. Rev. 497 (1967).
The parties in this case disagree over what the Hague amendment of Article 3 implies about the meaning of the unamended Convention. Compare Brief for Petitioners 37-38 with Brief for Respondent 22-28. Since it is *149possible to conclude either that the delegates at The Hague thought they were making a substantive change in Article 3(2), or that they merely intended to clarify ambiguous language, the Hague amendments are ultimately of little help in ascertaining the meaning of the original Convention.

 In In re Air Crash Disaster at Warsaw, Poland, on March 14, 1980, 705 F. 2d 85, 90 (CA2), cert. denied sub nom. Polskie Linie Lotnicze v. Robles, 464 U. S. 845 (1983), the Court of Appeals’ analysis to the contrary was based in large part on the fact that “[w]ithdrawal of the Denunciation [by the United States of the Warsaw Convention] and the CAB’s acceptance of the Montreal Agreement indicates a judgment by at least the executive branch that 10-point type was necessary to provide sufficient notice . . . .” 705 F. 2d, at 90. While we surely owe considerable deference to the views of the Executive Branch concerning the meaning of an international treaty, Sumitomo Shoji America, Inc. v. Avagliano, 457 U. S. 176, 184-185 (1982), I do not understand the United States’ acceptance of the Montreal Agreement to have been based on its legal opinion on the type size the Warsaw Convention required. Rather, the Government’s actions in connection with the Montreal Conference were based on political goals concerning desirable modifications of the existing conditions of international air travel by American passengers. See Lowenfeld & Mendelsohn, 80 Harv. L. Rev., at 546-596. Such circumstances do not call for particular deference to the position taken by the Executive Branch.

 Contrary to the Court’s belief, ante, at 134-135, n. 5, I do not assume that an adequate notice requirement exists because courts in this country have generally so held. I take note of those holdings and of the argument advanced by petitioners. I then accept the argument that some minimal *152level of adequacy is required, but I have no difficulty in determining that the notice given here was adequate. I express no opinion on the adequacy of notice in 6-point type, because that is not the case before us.