Treaties Don't Trump The Constitution

Can the President and Senate invest the federal government with new powers not enumerated in the U.S. Constitution simply by signing and ratifying a treaty?  Can the treaty power be used to override the Tenth Amendment and render it a dead letter?  Those issues will be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on November 5, 2013, in the case ofBond v. United States.

When I returned to Congress in January, I also wanted to return to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on which I had served almost 20 years ago.  I also wanted to serve on the Subcommittee that oversees the United Nations and other international organizations that continue to push treaties on us that could jeopardize the sovereignty of our nation. 

Indeed, I am so concerned about these threats to national sovereignty that I filed an amicus curiae brief in the U.S. Supreme Court to undo an 86-year old case under which a treaty, in essence, amends the U.S. Constitution.  I was pleased to be joined in this amicus curiae brief by Gun Owners of America, Gun Owners Foundation, Citizens United’s American Sovereignty Action Project, U.S. Justice Foundation, The Lincoln Institute, The Institute on the Constitution, The Abraham Lincoln Foundation, Downsize DC Foundation, DownsizeDC.org, Policy Analysis Center, Conservative Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the Tenth Amendment Center.  I want to thank each of these groups for their commitment to this issue. 

Here’s what this case is about.  Mrs. Bond, a Pennsylvania woman learned that her husband had impregnated her best friend, and set about to harm her in some way by smearing some chemicals she obtained from work where the other woman would touch them, including her mailbox.  Her attempts only gave her victim a chemical burn on her thumb.