Lower Court Holding in United States v. Bond
Decision of the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals
In Missouri v. Holland (1920), the Supreme Court declared that, if a treaty is valid, “there can be no dispute about the validity of the statute [implementing it] under Article 1, Section 8, as a necessary and proper means to execute the powers of the Government.” Implicit in that statement is the premise that principles of federalism will ordinarily impose no limitation on Congress’s ability to write laws supporting treaties, because the only relevant question is whether the underlying treaty is valid. Reasoning that a reading of Holland that categorically rejects federalism as a check on Congress’s treaty-implementing authority is…
