Court Opinion

ID: 9427793
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:21:53.898891+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:09.737036
License: Public Domain

Me. Justice Rehnquist,
with whom The Chief Justice, Mr. Justice Stewart, and Mr. Justice Stevens join, concurring in the judgment.
I am of the view that the basic question presented by the petitioners in this case is “political" and therefore nonjus-ticiable because it involves the authority of the President in the conduct of our country's foreign relations and the extent to which the Senate or the Congress is authorized to negate the action of the President. In Coleman v. Miller, 307 U. S. 433 (1939), a case in which members of the Kansas Legislature brought an action attacking a vote of the State Senate in favor of the ratification of the Child Labor Amendment, Mr. Chief Justice Hughes wrote in what is referred to as the “Opinion of the Court'':
“We think that . . . the question of the efficacy of ratifications by state legislatures, in the light of previous rejection or attempted withdrawal, should be regarded as a political question pertaining to the political departments, with the ultimate authority in the Congress in the exercise of its control over the promulgation of the adoption of the Amendment.
“The precise question as now raised is whether, when the legislature of the State, as we have found, has actually ratified the proposed amendment, the Court should *1003restrain the state officers from certifying the ratification to the Secretary of State, because of an earlier rejection, and thus prevent the question from coming before the political departments. We find no basis in either Constitution or statute for such judicial action. Article V, speaking solely of ratification, contains no provision as to rejection. . . .” Id., at 450.
Thus, Mr. Chief Justice Hughes’ opinion concluded that “Congress in controlling the promulgation of the adoption of a constitutional amendment has the final determination of the question whether by lapse of time its proposal of the amendment had lost its vitality prior to the required ratifications.” Id., at 456.
I believe it follows a fortiori from Coleman that the controversy in the instant case is a nonjusticiable political dispute that should be left for resolution by the Executive and Legislative Branches of the Government. Here, while the Constitution is express as to the manner in which the Senate shall participate in the ratification of a treaty, it is silent as to that body’s participation-in the abrogation of a treaty. In this respect the case is directly analogous to Coleman, supra. As stated in Dyer v. Blair, 390 F. Supp. 1291, 1302 (ND Ill. 1975) (three-judge court):
“A question that might be answered in different ways for different amendments must surely be controlled by political standards rather than standards easily characterized as judicially manageable.”
In light of the absence of any constitutional provision governing the termination of a treaty, and the fact that different termination procedures may be appropriate for different treaties (see, e. g., n. 1, infra), the instant case in my view also “must surely be controlled by political standards.”
I think that the justifications for concluding that the question here is political in nature are even more compelling than in Coleman because it involves foreign relations — specifically *1004a treaty commitment to use military force in the defense of a' foreign government if attacked. In United States v. Curtiss-Wright Corp., 299 U. S. 304 (1936), this Court said:
“Whether, if the Joint Resolution had related solely to internal affairs it would be open to the challenge that it constituted an unlawful delegation of legislative power to the Executive, we find it unnecessary to determine. The whole aim of the resolution is' to affect a situation entirely external to the United States, and falling within the category of foreign affairs. . . .” Id., at 316.
The present case differs in several important respects from Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U. S. 579 (1952), cited by petitioners as authority both for reaching the merits of this dispute and for reversing the Court of Appeals. In Youngstown, private litigants brought a suit contesting the President’s authority under his war powers to seize the Nation’s steel industry, an action of profound and demonstrable domestic impact. Here, by contrast, we are asked to settle a dispute between coequal branches of our Government, each of which has resources available to protect and assert its interests, resources not available to private litigants outside the judicial forum.1 Moreover, as in Curtiss-Wright, the *1005effect of this action, as far as we can tell, is “entirely external to the United States, and [falls] within the category of foreign affairs.” Finally, as already noted, the situation presented here is closely akin to that presented in Coleman, where the Constitution spoke only to the procedure for ratification of an amendment, not to its rejection.
Having decided that the question presented in this action is non justiciable, I believe that the appropriate disposition is for this Court to vacate the decision of the Court of Appeals and remand with instructions for the District Court to dismiss the complaint. This procedure derives support from our practice in disposing of moot actions in federal courts.2 For more than 30 years, we have instructed lower courts to vacate any decision on the merits of an action that has become moot prior to a resolution of the case in this Court. United States v. Munsingwear, Inc., 340 U. S. 36 (1950). The Court has required such decisions to be vacated in order to “prevent a judgment, unreviewable because of mootness, from spawning any legal consequences.” Id., at 41. It is even more imperative that this Court invoke this procedure to ensure that resolution of a “political question,” which should not have been decided by a lower court, does not “spawn any legal consequences.” An Art. Ill court’s resolution of a question that is “political” in character can create far more dis*1006ruption among the three coequal branches of Government than the resolution of a question presented in a moot controversy. Since the political nature of the questions presented should have precluded the lower courts from considering or deciding the merits of the controversy, the prior proceedings in the federal courts must be vacated, and the complaint dismissed.

 As observed by Chief Judge Wright in his concurring opinion below: “Congress has initiated the termination of treaties by directing or requiring the President to give notice of termination, without any prior presidential request. Congress has annulled treaties without any presidential notice. It has conferred on the President the power to terminate a particular treaty, and it has enacted statutes practically nullifying the domestic effects of a treaty and thus caused the President to carry out termination. . . .
“Moreover, Congress has a variety of powerful tools for influencing foreign policy decisions that bear on treaty matters. Under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, it can regulate commerce with foreign nations, raise and support armies, and declare war. It has power over the appointment of ambassadors and the funding of embassies and consulates. *1005Congress thus retains a strong influence oyer the President’s conduct in treaty matters.
“As our political history demonstrates, treaty creation and termination are complex phenomena rooted in the dynamic relationship between the two political branches of our government. We thus should decline the invitation to set in concrete a particular constitutionally acceptable arrangement by which the President and Congress are to share treaty termination.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 44A-45A (footnotes omitted).

 This Court, of course, may not prohibit state courts from deciding political questions, any more than it may prohibit them from deciding questions that are moot, Doremus v. Board of Education, 342 U. S. 429, 434 (1952), so long as they do not trench upon exclusively federal questions of foreign policy. Zschernig v. Miller, 389 U. S. 429, 441 (1968).