[William S. Dodge is Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Research at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. He and Professor Sarah H. Cleveland filed an amicus brief in Bond v. United States arguing that the Offenses Clause provides an additional basis for upholding the constitutionality of the Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act.]
The difference between signature and ratification was not the only point of misunderstanding about treaties at the oral argument in Bond v. United States. Both counsel for the petitioner Paul Clement and some of the Justices also seemed confused about self-executing and non-self-executing treaties. Under U.S. law, the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) is a non-self-executing treaty. Article VII(1) provides that “[e]ach State Party shall, in accordance with its constitutional processes, adopt the necessary measures to implement its obligations under this Convention” and, in particular, shall “prohibit natural and legal persons anywhere on its territory . . . from undertaking any activity prohibited to a State Party under this Convention, including enacting penal legislation with respect to such activity.” Justice Kagan asked if the treaty could have been self-executing, a possibility Mr. Clement seemed willing to entertain (transcript p. 7). Justice Scalia seemed to think that self-executing treaty would be better because it would require implementation by the states of the United States (transcript p. 33), though he was mistaken because a self-executing treaty binds the judges of every state under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause. Justice Breyer seemed to think that a self-executing treaty would be worse because it would cut out the House of Representatives (transcript p. 48). And Solicitor General Verrilli made the point that if “a self-executing treaty that requires the President to negotiate and two-thirds of the Senate to ratify it, can impose an obligation of that kind, then it has to be the case that a non-self-executing treaty . . . that has . . . the additional structural protection of the passage of legislation by the Senate and the House and being signed into law by the President, can do what the self-executing treaty can do” (transcript pp. 32-33). Verrilli’s point echoes one that has been made by Rick Pildes, among others, in response to Nick Rosencranz’s reading of the Treaty Power.
The problem with all of this is that it makes little sense in the context of a criminal case like Bond.
