"The Supreme Court says Texas does not have to give a new hearing to a Mexican on death row for rape and murder, deciding a case that mixes presidential power, international relations and the death penalty. The case pits the president against his home state of Texas. By a 6-3 vote, the court says President Bush does not have the authority to order a new hearing for the prisoner," the AP reports. "It put Bush in the unusual position of siding with death row prisoner Jose Ernesto Medellin, a Mexican citizen whom police prevented from consulting with Mexican diplomats, as provided by international treaty."

Legal reaction to the decision seems to mixed, given comments at legal blog sites.

"The Supreme Court's decision in effect requires that treaties can't be used to override American domestic law unless the treaties have first been clearly endorsed by our domestic democratic processes in a way that evidences an intention to have them be 'self-enforcing.' [ . . . ] The Court was even more clearly correct in rejecting the Bush Administration's argument that the president could order Texas to comply with the ICJ judgment even if Article 94 isn't self-enforcing. If the treaty isn't self-enforcing and Texas has no legal obligation to comply with it, the Constitution surely doesn't give the president the power to order Texas to comply merely because he thinks that it advances U.S. foreign policy interests," says Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy.

"The Chief Justice said that the ICJ’s Avena judgment was not enforceable because Congress had indicated that such judgments are not judicially enforceable but indicated that U.S. courts are required to enforce any judgments that Congress says they are required to enforce regardless whether they disagree with the foreign tribunal’s reasoning," notes Richard Samp, with the Washington Legal Foundation, who filed an amicus brief on behalf of the parents of one of the murder victims, supporting Texas' arguments.

"Having served as counsel of record for the Scholars' Brief in support of Texas, I think this is a great day for the Constitution. I’ve posted a more extensive discussion of the Medellin opinions and their implications over at the Opinio Juris blog here," says Prof. Ernie Young of Duke Law School.

FAIR comment: The big loser in this case are municipalities that give sanctuary to illegal aliens and prohibit local police from asking questions about suspects' immigration status. By refusing to allow police to gather this information these cities actually foster a climate where consular-access rights violations are likely to be commonplace given illegal aliens' reluctance to disclose their status.

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