Notable inter­na­tion­al law experts cit­ed in a recent arti­cle in the Washington Lawyer crit­i­cized the Supreme Court’s 2008 deci­sion on whether an inter­na­tion­al treaty was bind­ing on Texas in the case of death row inmate Jose Medellin. Carolyn Lamm, an attor­ney at White & Case spe­cial­iz­ing in inter­na­tion­al dis­pute res­o­lu­tion, stat­ed that “[T]he fail­ure to com­pel our state court organs to com­ply with the deci­sion of the ICJ [International Court of Justice] is regret­table, and the dis­sent­ing opin­ion that the lan­guage was self-exe­cut­ing is cor­rect.” In August 2008, Texas exe­cut­ed Medellin despite the judg­ment of the ICJ that his rights and those of 50 oth­er for­eign nation­als on death row were vio­lat­ed under the Vienna Convention of Consular Relations due to a fail­ure to inform the inmates of their right to con­tact their country’s con­sulate for assis­tance upon arrest.


In March 2008, how­ev­er, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that although the United States had an oblig­a­tion to hon­or the treaty, Texas was not required to com­ply. In mak­ing its deci­sion, the Court deter­mined that the pro­to­col on enforc­ing the Vienna Convention through the ICJ was not self-exe­cut­ing, and thus, in the absence of Congressional leg­is­la­tion com­pelling the state of Texas to com­ply with the ICJ rul­ing, Texas was not required to hold a hear­ing for Medellin as ordered in the rul­ing. Even an order from President George Bush was insuf­fi­cient to require Texas courts to ass­es whether the treaty vio­la­tion had impinged on Medellin’s tri­al and sen­tenc­ing. Michael Socarras, head of the inter­na­tion­al dis­pute res­o­lu­tion prac­tice at McDermott Will & Emery, said the Court should have rec­og­nized that ​“Texas is a sov­er­eign state, and that all sov­er­eign states are bound by the uni­ver­sal prac­tice fol­lowed among nations, and that ICJ deci­sions and the Vienna Convention are help­ful author­i­ties on uni­ver­sal prac­tice. Texas had a duty to fol­low uni­ver­sal con­sular prac­tice.”

The United States was not only a sig­na­to­ry to the Vienna Convention, but also the main force behind the cre­ation of the Optional Protocol in ques­tion here. In addi­tion, the United States was the first coun­try to call on the pro­tec­tions of the pro­to­col dur­ing the Iranian hostage cri­sis in 1979.

(S. Stauffer, ​“Texas v. World,” Washington Lawyer, October 2008.) See Foreign Nationals, International, and Supreme Court.

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