Editorials:President doesn’t boss state courts

The U.S. Supreme Court was correct to rule, by a 6-3 margin in Medellin v. Texas, that a decision by the World Court does not create an obligation by the state of Texas to countermand its own laws and grant a review to a convicted murderer because of a treaty provision. The case is complicated, but the principle involved is not that difficult.

Ernesto Medellin, now 33, has lived in the United States since he was 3, but is still a Mexican national. He was convicted in the gang rape and strangling murder of two teenage girls in Houston 1993 and sentenced to death.

However, the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, adopted in 1963 and ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1969, says a foreign national detained by a party to the treaty must be told that he has the right to contact a consular official of his home country, and Medellin wasn't. His defense attorneys did not raise the issue during his trial or his first appeal, but did so after the government of Mexico got a decision from the World Court that the United States had a duty to review his and other cases.

More complexities: although President Bush pulled the United States out of the part of the treaty requiring governments to accept the role of the World Court, he issued a memorandum ordering state courts to abide by the decision in this case. The Texas appeals court ruled, however, that he didn't have authority to so order state courts, and the matter went to the Supreme Court.

As John Eastman, dean of the Chapman University (Calif.) law school, noted, although the Constitution says treaties become the supreme law of the land, that applies only in governmental relations unless a treaty is specified as being self-enforcing, which this one wasn't. To become federal law, provisions of such a treaty must be passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the president. That didn't happen.

The other issue is whether the president has the power to order state courts to obey the orders of the World Court, in the absence of congressional action. The court correctly ruled that he does not.

As Roger Pilon, head of constitutional studies at the Cato Institute, explained, the fundamental principle is in Article I of the Constitution: "All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States." Neither the president, nor U.S. courts nor international courts can make U.S. law.

Notifying consulates when foreign nationals are arrested is a good idea, but this treaty didn't make it U.S. law.