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Missouri v. Holland

Facts of the Case

Provided by Oyez

In December 1916, the United States and Great Britain entered into a treaty to protect a number of migratory birds in the U.S. and Canada. Congress passed the Migratory Bird Treaty Act in 1918 in order to facilitate enforcement of the treaty. When Ray P. Holland, the U.S. Game Warden, threatened to arrest citizens of Missouri for violating the Act, the state of Missouri challenged the treaty. The state argued that the constitution gave Congress no enumerated power to regulate migratory bird hunting, and thus the regulation of such hunting was the province of the states according to the Tenth Amendment.

Questions

  1. Did the treaty infringe upon rights reserved to the states by the Tenth Amendment?

Conclusions

  1. In a 7-to-2 decision authored by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, the Court upheld the exercise of the treaty power and found no violation of the Tenth Amendment. The Court reasoned that the national interest in protecting wildlife could be protected only by national action. The Court further reasoned that the Supremacy Clause (Article VI, Clause 2) renders treaties the “supreme law of the land,” a finding that trumps any state-level concerns with regard to the provisions of any treaty. The Supremacy Clause further implied that the treaty provisions were not subject to questioning by the states under the process of judicial review.