From: sheriffcoltrane23x@gmail.com   
      
   Chemical Weapons Treaty Does Not Apply to Petty Crime, Justices Rule    
      
      
   Tourists on Monday outside the Supreme Court. The justices decided a case   
   involving the Convention on Chemical Weapons.    
   GABRIELLA DEMCZUK / THE NEW YORK TIMES    
   By ADAM LIPTAK    
   JUNE 2, 2014    
   WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that Congress had not meant to   
   authorize prosecutions of minor crimes under a chemical weapons treaty.    
      
   "We are reluctant to ignore the ordinary meaning of 'chemical weapon,' " Chief   
   Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for six justices, "when doing so would   
   transform a statute passed to implement the international Convention on   
   Chemical Weapons into one that    
   also makes it a federal offense to poison goldfish."    
      
   The decision was unanimous, but three justices did not join the majority's   
   reasoning. They said they would have rested the decision on constitutional   
   grounds, saying that the chemical weapons law covered minor crimes but that   
   Congress had overstepped its    
   constitutional authority by enacting it.    
      
   Chief Justice Roberts said constitutional concerns figured in the decision,   
   but only as "background assumptions." Since Congress would not lightly alter   
   the constitutional balance between the federal government and the states, he   
   said, the law should not    
   be read to "convert an astonishing amount" of local criminal conduct into   
   matters for federal law enforcement.    
      
   "In this curious case," he wrote, "we can insist on a clear indication that   
   Congress meant to reach purely local crimes before interpreting the statute's   
   expansive language in a way that intrudes on the police power of the states."    
      
   To do otherwise, he said, "would transform the statute from one whose core   
   concerns are acts of war, assassination and terrorism into a massive federal   
   anti-poisoning regime that reaches the simplest of assaults."    
      
      
   Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia   
   Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined the majority opinion. Justices Antonin   
   Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. each issued a concurring   
   opinion.    
      
   The chief justice's opinion, Justice Scalia wrote, "enables the fundamental   
   constitutional principle of limited federal powers to be set aside by the   
   president and Senate's exercise of the treaty power."    
      
   "We should not have shirked our duty and distorted the law to preserve that   
   assertion; we should have welcomed and eagerly grasped the opportunity -- nay,   
   the obligation -- to consider and repudiate it," he added.    
      
   Justice Scalia wrote that the majority's interpretation of the law had left it   
   unintelligible by using "interpretive principles never before imagined that   
   will bedevil our jurisprudence (and proliferate litigation) for years to   
   come."    
      
   "Poisoning a goldfish tank is apparently out, but what if the fish belongs to   
   a congressman or governor and the act is meant as a menacing message, a   
   small-time equivalent of leaving a severed horse's head in the bed?" he asked.    
      
   "One guess," he wrote, "is as bad as another."    
      
   The case arose from a lurid domestic dispute that started when a Pennsylvania   
   woman, Carol A. Bond, learned that her husband was the father of her best   
   friend's child. Ms. Bond, a microbiologist, spread harmful chemicals on the   
   friend's car, mailbox and    
   doorknob in late 2006 and early 2007, and the friend sustained a minor injury.    
      
   The local authorities decided not to pursue the matter. But federal   
   prosecutors charged Ms. Bond with using unconventional weapons in violation of   
   a law based on the Chemical Weapons Convention, a treaty concerned with   
   terrorists and rogue states.    
      
   The arguments in the case mostly concerned the source of Congress's power to   
   enact the law. The Constitution limits the areas in which Congress can act,   
   leaving the rest to the states.    
      
   The Justice Department said the law was justified by the federal government's   
   power to enter into treaties and that no additional constitutional authority   
   was required.    
      
   That position found support in a 1920 Supreme Court decision, Missouri v.   
   Holland. "If the treaty is valid, there can be no dispute about the validity   
   of the statute" enacted to fulfill it, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote   
   for the court.    
      
   Chief Justice Roberts's opinion avoided a ruling on the question of the scope   
   of the treaty power by interpreting the chemical weapons law narrowly.    
      
   The case, Bond v. United States, No. 12-158, had made an earlier appearance at   
   the court. In 2011, the court unanimously ruled that Ms. Bond had suffered the   
   sort of concrete injury -- a six-year prison sentence -- that gave her   
   standing to sue.    
      
      
   http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/06/03/us/chemical-weapons-treaty-   
   oes-not-apply-to-domestic-dispute-justices-rule.html?referrer=   
      
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