The Roberts Court Wades into Foreign Affairs

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear three important foreign affairs and international law cases this term (see here). It granted certiorari today in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld which will decide the legality of military commissions under the U.S. Constitution and the Geneva Conventions (which I discussed here). It also agreed to hear two cases testing the domestic judicial enforceability of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, which was the treaty at issue in Medellin (which I blogged incessantly about here) (thanks to Lyle Denniston of SCOTUSBlog for the heads up).

The Hamdan case is obviously important, but the two Vienna Convention cases are not insignificant either. The Court will decide a number of lingering questions about the domestic legal status of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, a treaty of the United States. It may also reach the question left unresolved by Medellin, e.g. whether the International Court of Justice’s judgments are directly enforceable in domestic court. The questions granted cert are (roughly):

(1) Whether the treaty creates individual judicially enforceable rights for foreign nationals;
(2) Whether the treaty rights, if violated, allow or require the suppression of evidence seized by police in violation of those treaty rights (Mirandazing the Vienna Convention);
(3) Whether state courts can interpret the Vienna Convention in ways contrary to the interpretation of the same treaty by the International Court of Justice.