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The Bond Court’s Institutional Truce

Part of: Agora: Bond v. United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Monica Hakimi
Monica Hakimi*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan Law School
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As many readers are aware, Bond v. United States is a quirky case. The federal government prosecuted under the implementing legislation for the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) a betrayed wife who used chemical agents to try to harm her husband’s lover. The wife argued that, as applied to her, the implementing legislation violated the Tenth Amendment. She thus raised difficult questions about the scope of the treaty power and of Congress’s authority to implement treaties through the Necessary and Proper Clause. The Bond Court avoided those questions with a clear statement rule: “we can insist on a clear indication that Congress meant to reach purely local crimes, before interpreting the statute’s expansive language in a way that intrudes on the police power of the States.” This resolution betrays the Court’s ambivalence about the appropriate limits of the treaty power and about the Court’s own capacity to define those limits.

Type
Agora: Bond v. United States
Information
AJIL Unbound , Volume 108 , 2014 , pp. 89 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of International Law 2014

References

1 Bond v. United States, 134 S.Ct. 2077 (2014).

2 Id. at 2090.

3 Lederman, Marty, Seven Observations About the Oral Argument in Bond, Opinio Juris (Nov. 6, 2013)Google Scholar.

4 Rosenkranz, Nicholas Quinn, Executing the Treaty Power, 118 Harv. L. Rev. 1867 (2005)Google Scholar.

5 Vázquez, Carlos Manuel, Missouri v. Holland’s Second Holding , 73 Mo. L. Rev. 939 (2008)Google Scholar.

6 Swaine, Edward T., Putting Missouri v. Holland on the Map , 73 Mo. L. Rev. (2008)Google Scholar.

7 Galbraith, Jean, Congress’s Treaty-Implementing Power in Historical Practice, 56 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 59 (2014)Google Scholar.

8 Bond, 134 S.Ct. 2077, 2103 (Thomas, J. concurring).

9 Id. at 2110.

10 Dodge, William S., Bond v. United States and Congress’s Role in Implementing Treaties , 108 AJIL Unbound 86 (2014)Google Scholar.

11 Cleveland, Sarah H. & Dodge, William S., Defining and Punishing Offenses Under Treaties, 124 Yale L.J. 2202 (2015)Google Scholar.