Medellin v. Texas--Summary of Decision

This 6-3 decision of the Supreme Court, affirming the decision of Texas' Court of Criminal Appeals, is fascinating on a number of levels. First, it probably is the longest, most complex and among the most important opinions authored by Chief Justice Roberts in his brief tenure on the Court. Second, it involves issues of the influence of international law on the domestic courts of the United States--a "hot button" issue in the last five years in legal circles. Finally, it implicates the way that Presidential power, through a memorandum to the US attorney general to comply with a ruling of the International Court of Justice, is binding on state courts. To summarize the decision best, I will quote the opening sections of Justice Roberts' opinion, then point out the major arguments made in the majority opinion, before pointing out the cautions expressed both in the opinion concurring in the judgment (Justice Stevens) and in the dissenters' views (the other three "liberals").

Framing the Issue

Chief Justice Roberts began his opinionin the following way:

"The International Court of Justice (ICJ), located in the Hague, is a tribunal established pursuant to the United Nations Charter to adjudicate disputes between member states. In the Case Concerning Avena and Other Mexican Nationals ( Mex.v.U.S.), 2004 I.C.J. 12 (Judgment of Mar. 31) ( Avena ), that tribunal considered a claim brought by Mexico against the United States. The ICJ held that, based on violations of the Vienna Convention, 51 named Mexican nationals were entitled to review and reconsideration of their state-court convictions and sentences in the United States..."

This states the issue. To what extent does the ruling of the ICJ in the Hague influence the way that state courts should handle cases of people in their jurisdiction, especially when the defendant is the same and the factual premises of the case are the same in both jurisdictions? Then the legal tussle began. First, the US Supreme Court weighed in. In its Sanchez-Llamas case (548 US 331, 2006), the Court held, contrary to the ICJ's determination, that the Vienna Convention did not preclude the application of state default rules. Case closed? Not only your life.

After the Avena decision, but before Sanchez-Llamas, President George W. Bush determined, through a Memorandum to the Attorney General (Feb. 28, 2005), that the US would "discharge its international obligations under Avena by having State courts give effect to the decision."

So now we have two seemingly great forces at work in the case. First, the ICJ says to the State of TX that Medellin's case (considered by the TX Court of Criminal Appeals and the ICJ) ought to be reconsidered because of a Vienna Convention violation. We can understand how the grand Republic of Texas would take offense at having these foreigners putting their noses into Texas' business. But, second, how can they resist the appeal of their own President, himself a TX oilman and baseball-team owner, when he tells them to have their courts "give effect to the decision"? When Texas determined that Medellin's subsequent habeas corpus petition was an abuse of the writ under state law, and Medellin appealed to the Supreme Court, the issue was placed directly at the Court's door.

So, Justice Roberts had to solve two questions--what was the effect of the ICJ ruling on the state court process of Texas and what was the effect of the President's Memorandum on the same process? He took these questions one at a time and came up with the following:

1. (From the summary of the decision):

"While a treaty may constitute an international commitment, it is not binding domestic law unless Congress has enacted statutes implementing it or the treaty itself conveys an intention that it be “self-executing” and is ratified on that basis. See, e.g., Foster v. Neilson, 2 Pet. 253, 314, 7 L.Ed. 415. The Avena judgment creates an international law obligation on the part of the United States, but it is not automatically binding domestic law because none of the relevant treaty sources-the Optional Protocol, the U.N. Charter, or the ICJ Statute-creates binding federal law in the absence of implementing legislation, and no such legislation has been enacted."

This summarizes Robert's opinion rather nicely. Unless the United States Congress enacts "enabling" legislation, the decisions of the ICJ will go unexecuted. The point is that the ICJ decisions have no binding force and do not automatically constitute federal law enforceable in US Courts. However, Justice Roberts didn't want to go too far (unless you think that he has gone too far already). In the language of the summary:

"The Court's holding does not call into question the ordinary enforcement of foreign judgments. An agreement to abide by the result of an international adjudication can be a treaty obligation like any other, so long as the agreement is consistent with the Constitution. In addition, Congress is up to the task of implementing non-self-executing treaties, even those involving complex commercial disputes."

Most foreign judgments that are to be honored are "ordinary," but this is no ordinary case.

2. On the second question, the authority of the President's Memorandum to dictate procedure in state courts, Justice Roberts turned to the framework offered by Justice Jackson in the Youngstown case (343 US 579) of nearly 60 years ago for help:

"First, “[w]hen the President acts pursuant to an express or implied authorization of Congress, his authority is at its maximum, for it includes all that he possesses in his own right plus all that Congress can delegate.” Youngstown, 343 U.S., at 635 (Jackson, J., concurring). Second, “[w]hen the President acts in absence of either a congressional grant or denial of authority, he can only rely upon his own independent powers, but there is a zone of twilight in which he and Congress may have concurrent authority, or in which its distribution is uncertain.” Id., at 637. In such a circumstance, Presidential authority can derive support from “congressional inertia, indifference or quiescence.” Ibid. Finally, “[w]hen the President takes measures incompatible with the expressed or implied will of Congress, his power is at its lowest ebb,” and the Court can sustain his actions “only by disabling the Congress from acting upon the subject.”"

The Court held in this instance that the President was acting at the "lowest ebb" of his powers in issuing such a Memorandum, because it was naturally the power of the Congress to pass enabling legislation to implement the decision of the ICJ. Thus, the President's Memorandum could effectively be ignored.

Thus, the upshot of Justice Roberts' majority opinion is that both the ICJ decision and the President's Memorandum can be safely ignored as long as Congress hasn't entered into the fray and passed some kind of law declaring what state courts are to do about it. Though many would say (and the three dissenters certainly did; and Stevens broadly hinted at this issue) that this is a rather cavalier dismissal of international opinion, a sort of intellectual or judicial isolationism that is more reminsicent of the time between WWI and WWII than for a global power in the 21st century, the Court majority was undeterred.

Concurrence/Dissent

Justice Stevens concurred in the judgment because he was persuaded that the relevant treaties do not authorize the Court to enforce the judgment of the ICJ in its 2004 Avena case. But he added some cautionary language: "I agree (with the dissenters) that the text and history of the Supremacy Clause, as well as this Court's treaty-related cases, do not support a presumption against self-execution" (which was the theory of the majority). In addition, he felt that the questions posed by the case were "close," while the majority seemed to think they had a sort of "slam-dunk" quality to them.

The long dissenters' opinion, authored by Justice Breyer, focused on the history and meaning of the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution. I think a most valuable service could be performed by someone who wanted to cull, from Supreme Court and other decisions, sections that discuss the history of interpretation or the meaning of various constitutional phrases/provisions. Then, if any young person is ambitious enough to want to rewrite our understanding of constitutional law, she/he could read and learn these things as a prelude for articulating a theory on history and interpretation that will, no doubt, come forth in the next decade by someone... But, before this comes forward, all that needs to be said about Breyer's dissent is that it brilliantly traces the history of the clause to argue that courts must regard a treaty (or a foreign decision like the ICJ decision) as equivalent to an act of the legislature, whenever it operates of itself without the aid of any legislative provision. Hence, it ought to be self-executing...

Conclusion

I think the issue of the impact/influence of international law, treaties, and court decisions on affairs in the United States is one of the "big legal issues" for the coming decade. The Court has waded in on the issue in this case. It took a (predictably) conservative line here, but the permutations of the issue for the future are enormous. Lots of future work for international lawyers to do...

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