The transcript will be available here later today. Lyle Denniston has, "Analysis: How to say no to the President?," at SCOTUS Blog. Here's the beginning; you'll want to read the entire post.
The Supreme Court, deeply fascinated with its own role in an interconnected world legal order, spent extra time on Wednesday examining the question of how to say no to the President on a treaty matter and, if it does, to do so without harming the Chief Executive’s power to speak for the nation in the global community. It was apparent that, if the case of Medellin v. Texas (06-984) had come to the Court without presidential involvement, it would have been easy to decide — in fact, the issue in that context may already have been effectively decided last year. But President Bush put his authority at the very center of it, and heavy complications have followed. The Justices’ keen interest in those complications led Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., to let the scheduled one-hour hearing Wednesday run on for an added 20 minutes — an especially rare gesture.
With cross-currents of constitutional and international law flowing freely, what appeared to be a majority of the Justices looked askance at a Presidential memo in February 2005, directing nine U.S. states to give 51 Mexican nationals convicted of crimes in those states a new chance to test their rights under an international treaty, the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. What was troubling those Justices the most, it seemed, was that the President had sought to make binding a ruling by the World Court that would otherwise not have controlling effect on states’ ciminal procedures. That was worrisome for two reasons: it might intrude on the Court’s role to say what the legal meaning and effect of treaties is, and it might empower the World Court, in effect, to dictate the substance of American law.
AP has this report.
The argument Wednesday, for which an hour was allotted, stretched to nearly 90 minutes as the justices threw question after question at lawyers for Medellin, the U.S. government and Texas in a case that mixes Bush administration claims of executive power with the role of international law in state court proceedings.
Several justices suggested that U.S. ratification of an agreement promising to abide by the international court's decisions is a sufficient basis for ruling in Medellin's favor. "The United States gave its promise. It voluntarily complied," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said.
The administration's position is that the president's declaration that the ruling should be enforced is reason enough for Texas to grant Medellin a new hearing. "Obviously, we feel the president's determination here is a critical element," U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement said.
But Justice Antonin Scalia reacted skeptically to that idea. "You're telling us we don't need Congress. The president can make it domestic law" on his own, Scalia said.
Texas courts have said the international court ruling has no weight in Texas and that Bush has no power to order its enforcement.
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