Tag: Law of the Land
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Treaties Versus Prior Acts of Congress
Treaties Versus Prior Acts of CongressThe Court has enforced numerous statutory provisions that it recognized as superseding prior treaty engagements. Chief Justice Marshall asserted that the converse would be true as well 1 -that a treaty that is sel…
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Treaties and Congress
Treaties and CongressIn the Convention, a proposal to require the adoption of treaties through enactment of a law before they should be binding was rejected.1 But the years since have seen numerous controversies with regard to the duties and obligati…
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Treaties and the States
Treaties and the StatesAs it so happened, the first case in which the Supreme Court dealt with the question of the effect of treaties on state laws involved the same issue that had prompted the drafting of Article VI, paragraph 2. During the Revolutionary War, the Virginia legislature provided that …
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Self-Executing Treaty
When Is a Treaty Self-ExecutingSeveral references have been made above to a distinction between treaties as self-executing and as merely executory, in which case they are enforceable only after the enactment of "legislation to carry them into effect." <a name=t1 href=#f1 target="_self…
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Necessary and Proper Clause
Necessary and Proper Clause DefinitionAll grants of power to Congress in § 8, as elsewhere, must be read in conjunction with the Necessary and Proper Clause, § 8, cl. 18, which authorizes Congress "[t]o make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the …
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Law of the Land Origin
Origin of the ConceptionHow did this distinctive feature of the Constitution come about, by virtue of which the treatymaking authority is enabled to stamp upon its promises the quality of municipal law, thereby rendering them enforceable by the courts without further action? The short answer is that…
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Law of the Land
Treaties as Law of the LandTreaty commitments of the United States are of two kinds. As Chief Justice Marshall wrote in 1829: "A treaty is, in its nature, a contract between two nations, not a legislative act. It does not generally effect, of itself, the object to be accomplished; especially, s…
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Congressional Repeal of Treaties
Congressional Repeal of TreatiesMadison contended that, when Congress is asked to carry a treaty into effect, it has the constitutional right, and indeed the duty, to determine the matter according to its own ideas of what is expedient.1 Developments…