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TREATY POWER UNDER THE CONSTITUTION §§ 80-81

jurisdiction; certainly excluded after the Congress finds it necessary or convenient to make any one of them an exclusive subject of its own power.

Each one of these powers of Congress may embrace many collateral objects which are included in the original generic term in which the grant is made, but still cach is confined to that specific grant, and is not, by the well established rule of judicial interpretation, allowed to transcend these boundaries. After Article I, § 8, has exhausted itself in grants of power to the Congress in the eighteen successive paragraphs of that section, (which practically embraces the whole grant of powers to Congress in the Constitution) we find these powers belong to Congress alone and can be used by no other arm of the Government, for Article I, § 1, clause 1, declares "all legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives."

§ 81. Having thus laid down what legislation Congress shall be empowered to enact, the Tenth Amendment, as part of the Constitution, declares "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." The Sixth Article makes the laws of the United States made in pursuance of the Constitution, supreme. The grants of power in Article I, § 8, are exclusive (as well as supreme) when Congress chooses to so make them. Any power which may otherwise legitimately be used by a State, must yield to the Federal power on the same subject, when Congress deems it necessary and wise to use it, but all State powers (and they are almost limitless in number) not granted to the Federal Government, are free from the control of Congress, and are as supreme as any powers granted to the Federal Government, because they are included in the Tenth Amendment, a part of the Constitution, and the Constitution, by Article VI, is itself declared to be the supreme law of the land; and for the further reason that they are the original sovereign powers of the States, left untouched by the Constitution in the possession of the States or the people.

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It seems to be overlooked by many writers that these reserved rights of the States, local it may be in their nature and scope, having no application outside of their own State, are by the very language of the Constitution, made as supreme as laws of Congress or of treaties made under the authority of the United States: for when Article VI declares that this Constitution shall be the supreme law of the land, it does not mean simply that the laws of Congress are to be supreme, or that treaties are to be supreme, but that every part and every section of that Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Those rights of the States being all of the rights that inhere in any State, except such as were given up and enumerated in the Constitution itself, not only have the vigor and force which inhere in them as powers of a sovereign State, but they have the additional strength of supremacy infused into them by the very language of the Constitution itself.

§ 82. Under Article II the powers of the executive are defined with precision and exactness, and his duties and powers enumerated and restricted. Article III is devoted to the judicial power of the United States, describing and limiting its power and functions, and other sections of the Constitution place prohibitions upon the powers of the United States, as well as of the States, while the Amendments thereto secure to the citizens of the United States certain civil and political rights which cannot be taken from them, except by change of the Constitution. We are justified, therefore, in holding that a careful examination of the whole instrument shows unmistakably an intention to place nowhere in the government of the United States or of the States any one supreme and uncontrollable power. The division of the functions of government between the Federal government and the States, the limitations on each, the prohibitions on both, all show the conclusiveness of this assertion; but the Sixth Article, which grants supremacy to this Constitution, to the laws of Congress made in pursuance thereof, and to treaties made under the authority of the United States, it is now claimed by some writers was inserted in the Constitu

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TREATY POWER UNDER THE CONSTITUTION §§ 82-84

tion near its close-after the powers of the Federal government and those of the States had been delicately adjusted, for the purpose of securing a national government that would deal with national affairs and State governments that would conserve their peculiar local needs, - to supersede and destroy what had already been accomplished.

The laws of the United States could not do it, for the objects for which the Federal government could legislate had been specifically enumerated, but since a treaty may embrace any subject, and some of those subjects may be included in the grants to Congress, while others may be among the reserved powers of the States secured in the Tenth Amendment, it is argued that all these must be included in the treaty power, and that when it acts with the insignia of supremacy attached to it, it sweeps away every prohibition and limitation that may have been prescribed in the Constitution.

§ 83. Great weight is attached by some writers to the fact that Article VI specifically declares that treaties and laws of Congress are to be the supreme law of the land. When Article VI declares "This Constitution . . . shall be the supreme law of the land," the words are sufficient without any other declaration as to the laws of Congress or treaties to make them the supreme law of the land; because the laws of Congress and treaties made under the authority of the United States emanate from the Constitution, and when the Constitution is declared to be the supreme law of the land, every part of it is supreme. The insertion of the words "the laws of Congress," and "all treaties made," in Article VI, serves to emphasize the supremacy of the powers of Congress and of treaties, but certainly no more strength is given to either by these words, for the words "this Constitution shall be the supreme law of the land" makes each equally supreme.

§ 84. The real difficulty in the construction of Article VI is found in the scope and breadth of the word "Treaty." The power to regulate commerce restricts all such regulations to conditions that arise from commerce; to establish post-offices

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LIMITATIONS ON THE TREATY-MAKING POWER

and post-roads, gives to Congress only the power to legislate on those subjects or those which naturally flow from it, but the word treaty, which may embrace any subject, in its very nature, has no such limitation. It is as broad and conclusive as national ambition or human activities could make it. Every personal right, every property right, every civil right, every political right, every social right, every religious right known to the American citizen may be included in its ample folds. All of these, as applied to the citizens of the United States and the States, had been adjusted by the Constitution before Article VI was reached and the question which is to be answered in America to-day is whether the framers of the Constitution, after spending weeks and months in erecting a structure which was to protect these rights, and after their work had been practically accomplished, intended by the insertion of this Article, to destroy the structure they had so successfully builded.

$85. If we are to accept, therefore, the literal meaning of the words in Article VI, as applied to treaties, and give to them the supremacy which it is claimed the letter of the Constitution accords them, what is the result? In the first place, every power delegated to the Congress of the United States for its execution may be surrendered to the treaty power. The purpose which the framers of the Constitution had that the imposition of taxes, the regulation of commerce, the establishment of post-offices and post-roads, the coining of money, the naturalization of foreigners, and the like, should be accomplished only through the action of representatives elected by the people of the States, and the Senators representing the States, is abandoned and the powers are surrendered to the President and the Senate in the making of treaties with foreign countries; in the second place, after providing, as was their intention, for a republican form of Government, it must be presumed they deliberately inserted Article VI to change that form to the government of an oligarchy; and, thirdly, that after they had determined in their wisdom to concede to Congress powers of legislation in certain particulars, and that all else was to be left with the States

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or the people, who were supposed to know better than anyone else what was best for them in their respective localities, they deliberately reversed their action and inserted this article, which might exclude their representatives in Congress from a voice in any legislation, and give to the President and the Senate the power to uproot and destroy what had already been conceded to Congress and the States. And all this results, it is claimed, because the word "Treaty" may embrace any subject that pertains to the people as citizens of the State or Nation.

§ 86. St. George Tucker, Story, Rawle, Willoughby, Pomeroy, and Cooley, and every reputable writer upon the Constitution, declare that the treaty-power can do nothing which tends to destroy the Constitution itself. Can it be doubted that the power to take away the right of Congress to legislate, or the right of the people of the States to regulate their own local affairs is the power to destroy the basic principles of the Constitution of our country?

§ 87. The clain asserted for the treaty-making power that it may embrace all rights and all subjects because the word "Treaty" may cmbrace such, cannot be maintained for another reason. The principle must be accepted as established, that where in any instrument a general grant is made, which is followed in the same instrument by a specific grant, that the "general" is limited by the "specific" grant. This is undoubtedly true of wills and deeds. A testator who devises all of his real estate to his wife and in a subsequent portion of his will devises his home place to his son, is considered to have limited the devise of all of his real estate to his wife by the specific devise of the home place to his son. The same principle will apply to a deed of real estate.

This principle applies peculiarly to the case of the treaty power. Article II, § 2, grants to the President and Senate the power, without any limitation, to make treaties; since treaties may embrace all rights of person and property, some of which may be included in the powers granted in the same Constitution, to the President, to the Congress, the Judiciary, and some

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