Some leading Chinese scholars and prominent Chinese activists have been circulating a letter on Chinese social media calling for the National People’s Congress (China’s legislature) to ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).   Here is an excerpt from the letter, which is carefully worded not to challenge the authority or the accomplishments of the current government.

2. Immediate ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights will honor the solemn pledge of the Chinese government, satisfy the fondest hopes of the Chinese people, and demonstrate China’s commitment to be a responsible world power.

When the United Nations passed the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1966, it called on all nations to see both treaties as part of a whole, signing and ratifying both together. As of November 1, 2010, 167 of the 193 United Nations member countries had formally joined the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In 2001, China ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which has been referred to as the “second generation of human rights.” But today, 15 years after our country signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1998, it has still not ratified this treaty, which is regarded as the “first generation of human rights.” China’s government has placed its emphasis on the gradual improvement of China’s existing legal system in advance of ratification, so that it can accommodate the demands and various responsibilities of the treaty. However, the gap between the signing of human rights treaties and their ratification must still be kept within the realm of reason, in order to promote further progress on civil rights and political rights, and in order to avoid unnecessary conjecture from the international community.

As a Permanent Member of the United Nations Security Council, China has always been an active initiator and participant in the International Bill of Human Rights. China’s government played an important role in the formulation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). International human rights standards are therefore not imported products but in fact include the achievements of Chinese culture and the Chinese people. The signing of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 15 years ago demonstrated even more our country’s serious commitment to the protection of basic human rights as a responsible world power. Afterwards, both President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao said openly on numerous occasions both at home and overseas that China would immediately take the legal steps to ratify the treaty once the conditions were right. In the beginning of 2008, more than 10,000 Chinese citizens signed a call for the ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. And so there is no longer any need to vacillate. In order to adapt to trends in human rights development, live up to our government’s pledges and answer the demands of the people, in order to behave in a manner consistent with a major power, we must join the treaty without hesitation, with a positive and decisive attitude.

As stirring as this letter is, I am doubtful that China’s adherence, or non-adherence to the ICCPR would make a big difference in advancing reform within China.  China is already a party to key human rights treaties, such as the Convention Against Torture and the Convention Against Genocide, but it is hard to tell whether being party to those treaties has made a big policy difference within China.  Moreover, the Chinese Constitution already guarantees many of the key rights in the ICCPR, but those rights are still rarely protected in China, and not all protected under Chinese law.

The larger question for international lawyers is whether human rights covenants like the ICCPR can or should be a vehicle for advancing a domestic political reform agenda.  I haven’t thought about this question enough, but I am skeptical that such treaties can play a big role and I’ve seen no empirical data that suggests it does make a difference one way or the other. (If I’m missing something, please feel free to post below). Indeed, such treaties can often be counterproductive to domestic reformers who lose some credibility by being too closely associated with foreign and international powers.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for advancing human rights and political reform within China. I just have doubts as to whether international human rights law is a useful vehicle for advancing this agenda.

As this Voice of America report notes, the Philippine government is determined to forge ahead with its UNCLOS arbitration, even though China is refusing to participate in the arbitration. This seems to be a sensible strategy, at least from a legal point of view, because it is plainly within its legal rights to do so.

But would a one-party arbitration be futile?  The VOA quotes Prof. Myron Nordquist of UVA on this point:

But how would one-party arbitration work, exactly? Professor Myron Nordquist of the Center for Oceans Law and Policy at the University of Virginia calls the situation “quite bizarre.”

“For one thing, it is doomed to failure because if the party won’t consent to the arbitration there is then no enforcement,” said Nordquist. “How would they expect a country that didn’t want to have a dispute settled by third parties to feel in any sense bound by a decision where they didn’t even participate?”

I agree the situation is odd, but it is not unprecedented.  The Annex VII provisions clearly contemplate situations where one party refuses to appoint an arbitrator by giving the power to the President of ITLOS to appoint the rest of the tribunal.  Moreover, general international arbitral practice is to allow arbitrations to proceed even when one party (like China) boycotts the whole proceeding. (See Gary Born, International Commercial Arbitration, at 449-50). In such cases, the tribunal typically continues to give notice to the boycotting party, and will reach a reasoned award based on its own assessment of the law and facts. It does not typically simply accept the participating party’s submissions as true.

Moreover, I take issue with Professor Nordquist’s conclusion that the arbitration is “doomed to failure because if the party won’t consent to the arbitration there is then no enforcement.”  His statement embeds a variety of (understandable) misunderstandings about the nature of Annex VII arbitration.

First of all, let’s be clear.  China has already consented to Annex VII arbitration, at least with respect to allowing a tribunal to be constituted and to determine whether it has jurisdiction in a dispute. China consented when it acceded to UNCLOS. All China has done so far is refuse to appoint an arbitrator.

Second, as any private international commercial arbitrator could tell you, consent to an arbitration does not in any way guarantee enforcement.  Indeed, in private commercial arbitrations, judicial enforcement proceedings are common and necessary to force parties to comply with arbitral awards.

To put this another way, if China had participated in the arbitration by appointing an arbitrator, I don’t think it would have affected its likelihood of complying with any arbitral award.  UNCLOS does not have any sanctions regime akin to, say the Dispute Settlement Understanding of the WTO, so China would not face any formal sanctions if it failed to comply with an arbitral award.

All of this is a long way of saying, the decision by the Philippines to continue with the arbitration (sans China) is not really any more futile than if China had fully participated.  In both situations, China would likely not have complied  with any unfavorable award.  Any award is only going to be useful to rally other countries to the Philippines’ side as well as in marshaling global public opinion to its cause (as Prof. Nordquist does note).  Indeed, it seems that the Philippines’ American lawyer is banking on the negative reputational effects of this case eventually pushing China to come around to participate in the arbitration. (FWIW, I am skeptical that the Chinese government can be manipulated this way, especially since domestic public opinion in China leans in the opposite direction.)

For this to work, though, the Philippines has got to try to educate the global media more effectively. Headlines from USA Today, for instance, describing China as rejecting “UN Mediation” only make things murkier for them.  China is going to play the “we-just-want-to-negotiate-unlike-you-troublesome-Filipinos” card.  The Philippines needs to play the “we-are-just-asking-for-the-arbitration-that-you-consented-to” card.  So far, they are not doing all that well.

Breaking news:  China has rejected arbitration under Annex VII of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea with the Philippines, dealing a heavy blow to the future of dispute settlement under UNCLOS (h/t China Law Prof Blog).  According to this China Daily report,

“Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines Ma Keqing had an appointment with officials from the Philippines’ Foreign Ministry on Tuesday and returned a note and related notice after expressing China’s rejection,” spokesman Hong Lei said at a daily press briefing.

“The note and related notice not only violate the consensus enshrined in the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC), but are also factually flawed and contain false accusations,” Hong said.

As I have noted here (and as Prof. Clarke notes as well), the Philippines is now within its rights to ask the President of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea to appoint all four remaining arbitrators for the Annex VII tribunal.  Once the President of ITLOS has done so, the duly constituted arbitral tribunal may act even without China’s participation.

Upon reflection, I am not really surprised China has decided to walk away from the Annex VII tribunal.  As I noted earlier, such tribunals have tended to combine their considerations of jurisdiction with those of the merits.  They have not generally bifurcated their proceedings, nor do they seem to have any obligation to do so.

This is a problem for China because while their jurisdictional challenge is pretty strong, their argument on the merits is undeveloped and fuzzy.  They have never exactly spelled out what they mean by having “indisputable sovereignty” over the South China Sea.   Do they mean it is a territorial sea? Or that they have general economic rights similar to an Exclusive Economic Zone?

So I am not shocked that China is walking away here. The question for the Philipppines is: what next? Do they continue with the Annex VII arbitration without China? Well, their DFA seems ready to move forward without China.  But would any award issued by this tribunal be pretty meaningless?

I’m not sure. I think that any award there would have little impact on China, but it should be useful in helping rally allies in Southeast Asia, especially within ASEAN.  It is not going to stop China much, but an award that undermines the legality of China’s claims is certainly better to have than not to have. But it is not nearly as much as it would have been if China had played ball (and lost).

China’s statement contains a curious and hard to understand argument.  According to the Chinese foreign ministry, the Philippines arbitration claim “complicates” resolution of conflicts in the South China Sea in violation of the Declaration on Parties’ Conduct in the South China Sea.    Presumably, China is referring to Article 5 of the Declaration:

5. The Parties undertake to exercise self-restraint in the conduct of activities that would complicate or escalate disputes and affect peace and stability including, among others, refraining from action of inhabiting on the presently uninhabited islands, reefs, shoals, cays, and other features and to handle their differences in a constructive manner.

Does making an arbitration claim under Annex VII “complicate or escalate disputes”?  Given the whole context of Paragraph 5, I am highly doubtful of this argument. One must also note that the previous paragraph instructs all parties to

undertake to resolve their territorial and jurisdictional disputes by peaceful means, without resorting to the threat or use of force, through friendly consultations and negotiations by sovereign states directly concerned, in accordance with universally recognized principles of international law, including the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea;

The explicit reference to UNCLOS (albeit the 1982 version) doesn’t really add much weight to the claim that the the Declaration somehow prohibits parties from resorting to UNCLOS arbitration.  If anything, it goes the other way.  Given that the Declaration is not technically binding under international law anyway, let’s just say this is the weakest of a series of weak arguments trotted out by China in this dispute.

So let’s just call this what it is: China is thumbing its nose at UNCLOS and it has now dealt a  serious, near fatal blow, to the UNCLOS dispute settlement system, at least in its ability to resolve serious disputes involving major powers.  UNCLOS arbitration is not going to restrain China in any significant way. At least, China doesn’t think it will pay any serious costs to walking away, which is why it is willing to accept the equivalent of a default judgment.

From the perspective of the United States, the China-Philippines episode is a cautionary tale. On the one hand, it suggests that those critics of UNCLOS worried about the impact of Annex VII arbitration tribunals need not fear them all that much.  On the other hand, this episode should put an end to the always silly argument that the US needed to join UNCLOS in order to use UNCLOS against China.  That was never really going to work, and we now have ample evidence.

As far as I can tell, the Chinese government continues to pretend as if the Philippines’ Law of the Sea arbitration claim doesn’t exist.  Articles like this one suggest the Philippines government continues to wait for some official or unofficial Chinese response.  The February 22 deadline for China to appoint an arbitrator is fast approaching.

There are obviously bigger things going on in the world, and in East Asia (the North Korea nuclear tests come to mind).  But it is worth noting that I ran across, for the first time, an article in the Chinese press discussing the arbitration with sophistication and a very good understanding of the Annex VII process.  Published in the journal “瞭望新闻周刊“ or “Outlook Newsweekly”, the article describes the views of an unnamed expert advising the Chinese government not to take the Filipino arbitration claim lightly.

The expert offers a few considerations for the Chinese government.  Among other things, the expert notes that the Philippines is using this arbitration to gain support and sympathy from its neighbors (Vietnam is supporting) and its allies (US Secretary of State Kerry and the EU Parliament head support it). The claim also hypes suspicions of China at the United Nations and elsewhere.

More interestingly, the expert further notes that if China does nothing, the arbitration will still continue with the Japanese ITLOS president appointing the rest of the members.  (Maybe the expert was reading Opinio Juris!).  In any event, the expert advises the Chinese government to appoint an arbitrator and work hard to convince to arbitration tribunal to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction.  Moreover, China can at any time during the arbitration work out a settlement agreement with the Philippines.  (There is more to the article, but this is the key advice).

So is this is a sign of where the Chinese government is going? It seems unlikely that the musings of an unnamed expert will be very important, but who knows? At the very least, it seems as if there is some thinking on this issue going on in China.  The 30 day clock continues to tick. Only six days left!

I used to blog regularly about the Whale Wars, my name for the ongoing struggle between Japanese Whalers and those groups devoted to protecting whales.  But I stopped almost three years ago when Australia filed its case against Japan in the ICJ, since nothing important seems to have happened since then.  (Did we really need 22 months for written proceedings, when the reply and rejoinder weren’t even permitted? And then a decision to let New Zealand to intervene, and no doubt they need time to file papers.  Someone, wake me up when a decision or hearing is in sight!)

I used to watch TV regularly, but stopped a few years ago in an effort to set a good example for my daughter. But I regret that now because, I might have run across this program on Animal Planet, Whale Wars, about the “heroic” Sea Shepherd group that is engaged in a decade long effort to harass or even block Japanese whalers.  (Strangely enough, the “heroic” lawyers duking out these issues at the ICJ don’t rate their own show, or even make it into this show as cameos.  It’s because they need 22 months to file two measly memorials!).

As Jessica noted yesterday, the Whale Wars (as TV programming) came to an abrupt end yesterday when the US Supreme Court denied an emergency petition to overturn an injunction by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit enjoining the Sea Shepherd from coming within 500 feet of active Japanese whalers.

I don’t have access to the papers filed in the Supreme Court petition, but the jurisdictional argument described in the news seems pretty sketchy, certainly as to personal jurisdiction.  I don’t think the Japanese whalers’ merits claims are very persuasive either, but given that the star of the show is based in the Seattle, and that the organization is based in Seattle, the fact that it uses an australian affiliate can’t possibly be enough to avoid personal jurisdiction in Seattle courts.

In any event, I am pleased the Whale Wars has made it into US courts.  I look forward to re-opening my coverage of the various disputes, as the US courts will seem quite a “rocket docket” when compared to the glacial pace of the ICJ.

Apparently, the U.S. conservative policymaking world has made its peace with the ICC.  As long as the ICC doesn’t bother the US, the US won’t bother the ICC.  But the US has no plans to join either.  That is the bottom line from this report from Colum Lynch.

Have U.S. conservatives really lost the war on the International Criminal Court?

A decade ago, President George W. Bush‘s U.N. envoy, John Negroponte, threatened to shut down U.N. peacekeeping missions from Bosnia to Guatemala if the U.N. Security Council failed to immunize American peacekeepers from prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Bush administration threatened to cut aid to America’s military allies if they failed to sign pacts — known as Article 98 Agreements — vowing never to surrender a U.S. citizen to the Hague-based court. John Bolton, the Republicans’ fiercest foe of the court, declared the day he reversed the Clinton administration’s decision to sign the treaty establishing the court his happiest. “I felt like a kid on Christmas day,” he wrote in his memoir. The very future of the international tribunal appeared to be at risk.

Today, the Security Council routinely passes resolutions expanding the scope of the international court and few pay it any notice. Last year, the Security Council cited the ICC in resolutions nine times, including in a December resolution — 2085 — that requires peacekeepers in Mali to support “national and international efforts, including those of the International Criminal Court, to bring to justice perpetrators of serious human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law.”

The article goes on to quote our own Ken Anderson and Brett Schaefer at Heritage to say that, basically, the American right doesn’t really care about the ICC much anymore. I think that is more or less correct. I would add that the utter lack of enthusiasm in the Obama Administration for joining the ICC has made the right feel much better as well.  Even the most influential US NGOs have toned down their ICC campaigns.

I will also say that (as Ken notes in the article), Israel is a red line for the American right and the ICC will be back in the penalty box if the ICC opens an investigation into Palestine.  And that is not exactly out of the realm of possibility.

Neither the arbitral tribunal’s order demanding Ecuador act to stop enforcement of the $18 Billion judgment against Chevron, nor Ecuador’s continued brazen refusal to follow the order is really much a surprise. The Chevron-Ecuador Death Cage Match continues unabated and has gotten so out of control that almost nothing shocks me about this case anymore.  A former Ecuadorian judge swearing in US federal court that he was paid thousands of dollars by US plaintiffs attorneys to ghostwrite the underlying case against Chevron is just another weird detail in an already sordid story.

The theory of the interim award is interesting.  Ecuador has a duty to preserve the status quo while the arbitral tribunal reviews the merits of Chevron’s claims against Ecuador.  But the plaintiffs in the Lago Agrio case are not parties to the arbitration and are free to continue to pursue enforcement.  I suppose the argument is Ecuador is facilitating the overseas enforcement actions by not suspending  the domestic Ecuadorian litigation. That does seem a problem, although what exactly could Ecuador do? Pass new legislation ordering its courts to stop the domestic litigation?

I may be missing something, I am not sure this award does Chevron much good.  It simply puts a little more leverage on Ecuador to do something to stop the enforcement actions against Chevron, or face responsibility for costs incurred by Chevron from the enforcement actions.  Fair enough, but if Ecuador feels the tribunal will ultimately rule for them anyway on the merits, then this award doesn’t really add a whole lot of pressure, nor does it give Chevron much additional leverage in foreign courts like Argentina or Canada where enforcement actions are proceeding.  The US litigation attempting to show fraud is more likely to bear fruit than this award in stopping those actions.

In other words, it is rational for Ecuador to drag its feet on obeying the arbitral tribunal’s various interim awards.  The only basis for condemning Ecuador is simple: it is flagrantly and openly violating its solemn treaty obligations.  But should it be condemned on those grounds alone?  Neither rational choice nor realist scholars would do so.  But what about the rest of you?

Apropos of Kevin’s recent posts, Professor George Bisharat of UC Hastings Law School takes to the NYT op-ed pages to call for Palestine to join the ICC and seek investigation of Israel’s actions in the West Bank and Gaza.

The Palestinians’ first attempt to join the I.C.C. was thwarted last April when the court’s chief prosecutor at the time, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, declined the request on the grounds that Palestine was not a state. That ambiguity has since diminished with the United Nations’ conferral of nonmember state status on Palestine in November. Israel’s frantic opposition to the elevation of Palestine’s status at the United Nations was motivated precisely by the fear that it would soon lead to I.C.C. jurisdiction over Palestinian claims of war crimes.

Israeli leaders are unnerved for good reason. The I.C.C. could prosecute major international crimes committed on Palestinian soil anytime after the court’s founding on July 1, 2002.

As our readers know, the retroactivity issue is not quite so easy, although there is certainly ample evidence this could happen. But I have two main reactions:

1) Are we so sure that the UN General Assembly vote to upgrade Palestine to observer state status settled the statehood question for the purposes of the ICC? After all, Palestine had already been recognized by more than 100 countries prior to the recent GA vote, but the ICC rejected jurisdiction in that situation.  What has really changed?  I agree that the GA vote matters, but does it matter enough?

2)  Professor Bisharat also suggests that “Ending Israel’s impunity for its clear violations of legal norms would both promote peace in the Middle East and help uphold the integrity of international law.”  I am doubtful about both of these claims.  Even if Israel is guilty of the violations Bisharat alleges, how does chasing them with ineffectual ICC arrest warrants help the peace process? And how would the integrity of international law be upheld by ICC investigations that will surely be rejected by Israel (and Hamas when they realize what they are facing).

If this is the Palestinian strategy to resolve their dispute with Israel, than the prospects for the settlement of this dispute are even more remote than I had previously believed.

For those of you wondering how seriously the Chinese media is taking the Philippines’ arbitration claim against China over the South China Sea (there must be at least two of you out there), here is an illustrative cartoon from a Chinese newspaper, “JingChu Times”, in Central China (although originally from another publication).

Although one doesn’t need to read Chinese to get the jist, here is my attempt to translate anyway.

The Foot is labeled: “Chinese Territory”

The Fish biting the Foot’s toe is labeled: “The Philippines”.  The Fish is holding a sign with the words: “Mine!”.

Yes, this Annex VII UNCLOS arbitration claim is really sending shock waves throughout China.

[I know that what this blog needs is yet another post on the China-Philippines UNCLOS Arbitration! We aim to please!]

Steve Groves of Heritage asks in the comments to my prior post: What happens if China simply refuses to show up at the arbitration? Can an arbitral tribunal even be formed to rule on jurisdiction?

This is something that I’ve wondered too, and then I realized Annex VII of UNCLOS appears to settle this issue as well.  The key provision is Article 3 of Annex VII. Under Art. 3(b), the initiating party appoints an arbitrator, which the Philippines has already done.  Then,

(c) The other party to the dispute shall, within 30 days of receipt of the notification referred to in article l of this Annex, appoint one member to be chosen preferably from the list, who may be its national. If the appointment is not made within that period, the party instituting the proceedings may, within two weeks of the expiration of that period, request that the appointment be made in accordance with subparagraph (e).

(Emphasis added.).  Turning to Subparagraph (e):

(e) Unless the parties agree that any appointment under subparagraphs (c) and (d) be made by a person or a third State chosen by the parties, the President of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea shall make the necessary appointments. …

(Emphasis added). Essentially, this means the President of ITLOS can fill out the rest of the arbitral tribunal if China tries to boycott, by appointing the remaining four members.  As Craig Allen of the University of Washington pointed out to me in an email, the current President of ITLOS is Shunji Yanai, a well-respected diplomat and jurist.  That is to say, a well-respected Japanese diplomat and jurist.  I’ve met President Yanai briefly, and he is a very smart and well-accomplished guy.  But Japan is just not on China’s BFF list right now.  China’s Weibo Internet commenters might well just blow up if this happens.

Professor Allen suggests that the President of ITLOS might, before appointing arbitrators, consider the jurisdictional objection and refuse to appoint a tribunal. I think this is a plausible, but not the most natural reading of Annex VII, Art. 3.  Professor Allen also raises a good point: China’s best friend here might well be the United States, which has a strong interest in seeing an expansive reading of the Article 298 exemptions.

In any event, the few Annex VII arbitral tribunals that have been constituted have generally not hesitated to rule on their own jurisdiction.  See Barbados v. Trinidad, or Guyana v. Suriname. (For a full list, see here).  Even worse from China’s perspective, these Annex VII arbitral tribunals issued their jurisdictional decision at the same time as they issued the award on the merits.  They don’t have to do so, and they can bifurcate the proceedings to address jurisdiction first.  But they don’t have to.

Would one of the journalists forced to sit through Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs press briefings please ask the spokesman to address the arbitral tribunal question?  Or at least, ask them again? Will China play the arbitral tribunal game and appoint someone by February 21?  Or will they let President Yanai appoint the tribunal for them?   The 30-day clock is running.

This article from the Global Times, a hawkish state-controlled newspaper in China, probably reflects a little bit of the official Chinese view on the Philippines UNCLOS claim. It also contains this troubling bit of analysis, from a Chinese scholar:

The international court would not take the case without agreements from all parties involved, Dong Manyuan, a researcher at the China Institute of International Studies, told the Global Times.

Uh, yes, that’s true in a general sense.  But China has already agreed to allow an Article 287 arbitral tribunal to take this case and at least to determine jurisdiction. Article 288(4) would seem to be the last word on this point.

4. In the event of a dispute as to whether a court or tribunal has jurisdiction, the matter shall be settled by decision of that court or tribunal.

Sorry, Global Times! China is stuck with this case, at least as a legal matter, and at least through the jurisdictional phase. I hope the Chinese government is getting better legal advice than this. China could boycott the arbitration, but they would be in a clear violation of Article 287 and Article 288 of UNCLOS.  Will it dare to do so?

I am remiss in not linking earlier to this excellent and absorbing discussion of the upcoming US Supreme Court decision in Bond v. United States at the Volokh Conspiracy.  Rick Pildes at NYU is doing a nice job, but he is single-handedly taking on Professors Nick Rosenkranz, Ilya Somin, and Eugene Kontorovich on various aspects of the treaty power and its limitations under the U.S. Constitution.  So Professor Pildes is a little outgunned, although he is doing a nice job nonetheless.

My own two cents so far:  I find the textual argument for a limited treaty-execution power fairly compelling, especially under the Necessary and Proper Clause.  I also agree that the Bill of Rights limitation on the treaty power, inferred from the Supreme Court’s plurality decision in Reid v. Covert, is not a particularly powerful precedent in favor of the Missouri v. Holland result.  If anything, the Reid v. Covert conclusion that treaties cannot violate the Bill of Rights should limit the impact of the earlier Missouri decision, which may not have agreed with Reid.

But Professor Pildes certainly has a powerful argument on this front (at least to me): If a self-executing treaty can exceed Congress’ Article I powers, than why not a statute implementing that same treaty?  What is the structural logic of this result?

For this reason, I associate myself with Professor Curtis Bradley’s view that it makes sense to read a federalism limitation on the self-executing effects of a treaty as well. That question was the subject of Missouri’s main holding, and that holding is also troubling and suspect. I understand that the arguments for limiting the implementation power are stronger, at least textually, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t good structural arguments for limiting the self-executing effects of treaties as well.