Transcript You`re not the boss of me!

You’re not the boss of
me!
Medellin v. Texas
The treaty
►
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►
Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, adopted in 1963
and now joined by 171 nations, including the United States
(ratified by Senate in 1969)
U.S. was a prime architect of the treaty.
A separate Optional Protocol, embraced by 46 of those 171
nations, requires governments to accept the role of the
World Court (the International Court of Justice at The
Hague) in deciding disputes under the Vienna Convention.
President Bush withdrew the U.S. from the Optional
Protocol as the Medellin case unfolded in U.S. courts, but
wants it enforced in that case and those involving 50 other
Mexican nationals who won a case in the World Court on
their treaty rights.
► Under
the Convention’s Article 36, a foreign
national who is detained by a government that
consents to the treaty must be told without delay
that he has a right to contact a diplomat – a
consular officer -- from his or her home country.
► “While the United States has vigorously insisted on
strict compliance with [the Convention] when
Americans have been detained overseas,
compliance in the United States has been poor,”
according to one of the filings in the Medellin case.
Texas v. Medellin
► Medellin,
a Mexican national, was convicted and
sentenced to death in Texas state court for a 1993
rape and murder of two teenage girls
► Medellin filed state habeas corpus action re his
right to contact the Mexican consulate as required
by the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations
(VCCR).
► State trial court rejected and Texas Court of
Criminal Appeals affirmed
Mexico v. United States,
(a.k.a. Avena case)
► After
Mexico found out about Medellin's
detention, it commenced legal action
against the U.S. in the International Court of
Justice (ICJ)
► Mexico sought relief for Medellin and 50
other Mexican nationals who, like Medellin,
were on death row in American prisons, yet
had never been informed of their VCCR
rights
Medellin v. Dretke
► Federal
habeas corpus petition
► District Court denied the petition
► Avena decided
► Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals denied
Medellín's application for a certificate of
appealability; based on Medellín's
procedural default
ICJ ruled in 2004
► U.S.
courts had to grant "review and
reconsideration" of all 51 cases.
Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals
► Refused
to grant habeas relief.
► VCCR did not create individually enforceable
rights.
► Even if individuals could assert VCCR rights,
it was too late for Medellin himself to do so
- for, according to the Court, he had
procedurally defaulted his VCCR claim when
he failed to raise it in state court.
Supreme Court
► agreed
to hear an appeal of the Fifth
Circuit's ruling
President Bush
► Amicus
urging the Court to rule that Medellin had
no private right to seek enforcement of the
Convention
► stated the United States would discharge its
international obligations under the Avena
judgment by "having State courts give effect to
the [ICJ] decision in accordance with general
principles of comity in cases filed by the 51
Mexican nationals addressed in that decision.“
► Medellín filed a successive state application for a
writ of habeas corpus just four days before oral
argument here.
Medellin
► filed
a new application for relief in state
court in Texas.
► His application was timely, he pointed out,
because neither the ICJ decision nor the
President's memorandum had previously
been available.
U.S. Supreme Court
► dismissed
Medellin's appeal
► because, it noted, the Texas "state
proceeding may provide Medellin with the
review and reconsideration of his Vienna
Convention claim that the ICJ required, and
that Medellin now seeks in this proceeding."
5-4 decision
► http://www.scotuswiki.com/index.php?title=
Medellin_v._Texas
Medellin v. Texas
► Texas
Court of Criminal Appeals
► Vienna Convention granted him an
individual right that state courts must
respect
► Constitution gives the President broad
power to ensure that treaties are enforced,
and that this power extends to the
treatment of treaties in state court
proceedings.
Texas Court of Criminal Appeals
► dismissed
his petition
► violate state procedural rules, and that
those rules were not supplanted by the
Convention.
► The President had no authority to order the
enforcement in state court of an ICJ ruling,
because that would imply a law-making
power not allocated to him by the
Constitution.
Texas argued
► President
had contradicted Congress by seeking to
make the Vienna Convention enforceable not
solely through diplomatic efforts
► President also ran counter to Congress’ wishes
because it operated on the assumption that the
treaty created individual rights, not merely rights
of governments vis-à-vis governments.
► Relied upon the Sanchez-Llamas decision of 2006,
interpreting that ruling as a rejection of any
binding effect of World Court decisions in U.S.
courts.
Medellin v. Texas,
552 U.S. ____2008
► The
Court held that the signed Protocol of the
Vienna Convention did not make the treaty selfexecuting and, therefore, the treaty is not binding
upon state courts until it is enacted into law by
Congress.
► Chief Justice Roberts characterized the presidential
memorandum as an attempt by the executive
branch to enforce a non-self executing treaty
without the necessary Congressional action, giving
it no binding authority on state courts.
6-3 decision
► http://www.oyez.org/cases/2000-
2009/2007/2007_06_984/