the discretion to grant declaratory relief is to be exercised with great circumspection when matters of public moment are involved, ... or when a request for relief threatens to drag a federal court prematurely into constitutional issues that are freighted with uncertainty.
In all civil litigation, the judicial decree is not the end but the means. At the end of the rainbow lies not a judgment, but some action (or cessation of action) by the defendant that the judgment produces—the payment of damages, or some specific performance, or the termination of some conduct. Redress is sought through the court, but from the defendant. This is no less true of a declaratory judgment suit than of any other action. The real value of the judicial pronouncement—what makes it a proper judicial resolution of a “case or controversy” rather than an advisory opinion—is in the settling of some dispute which affects the behavior of the defendant towards the plaintiff.
There is certainly no power given by the Constitution to the Federal Government to establish or maintain colonies bordering on the United States or at a distance, to be ruled and governed at its own pleasure.... [N]o power is given to acquire a Territory to be held and governed permanently in that character.
We are also of opinion that the power to acquire territories by treaty implies, not only the power to govern such territory, but to prescribe upon what terms the United States will receive its inhabitants, and what their status shall be in what Chief Justice Marshall termed the “American Empire.”
*164 It is obvious that in the annexation of outlying and distant possessions grave questions will arise from differences of race, habits, laws and customs of the people ... which may require action on the part of Congress that would be quite unnecessary in the annexation of contiguous territory inhabited only by people of the same race, or by scattered bodies of native Indians.
A false step at this time might be fatal to what Chief Justice Marshall called the American Empire.... If those possessions are inhabited by alien races, differing from us in religion, customs, laws, methods of taxation, and modes of thought, the administration of government and justice, according to Anglo–Saxon principles, may for a time be impossible; and the question at once arises whether large concessions ought not to be made for a time, that ultimately our own theories may be carried out.... We decline to hold that there is anything in the Constitution to forbid such action. We are therefore of the opinion that the Island of Porto Rico is a territory appurtenant and belonging to the United States, but not a part of the United States within the revenue clauses of the Constitution....
assumes that the Constitution created a government empowered to acquire countries throughout the world, to be governed by different rules than those obtaining in the original states and territories, and substitutes for the present system of republican government a system of domination over distant provinces in the exercise of unrestricted power.
Still less is it true that Congress can deal with new territories just as other nations have done or may do with their new territories.... Monarchical and despotic governments, unrestrained by written constitutions, may do with newly acquired territories what this government may not do consistently with our fundamental law. To say otherwise is to concede that Congress may, by action taken outside of the Constitution, engraft upon our republican institutions a colonial system such as exists under monarchical governments. Surely such a result was never contemplated by the fathers of the Constitution.... The idea that this country may acquire territories *165 anywhere upon the earth, by conquest or treaty, and hold them as mere colonies or provinces,—the people inhabiting them to enjoy only such rights as Congress chooses to accord to them,—is wholly inconsistent with the spirit and genius, as well as with the words, of the Constitution.
Whether a particular race will or will not assimilate with our people, and whether they can or cannot with safety to our institutions be brought within the operation of the Constitution, is a matter to be thought of when it is proposed to acquire their territory by treaty. A mistake in the acquisition of territory, although such acquisition seemed at the time to be necessary, cannot be made the ground for violating the Constitution or refusing to give full effect to its provisions. The Constitution is not to be obeyed or disobeyed as the circumstances of a particular crisis in our history may suggest the one or the other course to be pursued.... The Constitution is supreme over every foot of territory, wherever situated, under the jurisdiction of the United States, and its full operation cannot be stayed by any branch of the government in order to meet what some may suppose to be extraordinary emergencies. If the Constitution is in force in any territory, it is in force there for every purpose embraced by the objects for which the government was ordained.
The jury system postulates a conscious duty of participation in the machinery of justice which it is hard for people not brought up in fundamentally popular government at once to acquire.... Congress has thought that a people like the Filipinos, or the Porto Ricans, trained to a complete judicial system which knows no juries, living in compact and ancient communities, with definitely formed customs and political conceptions, should be permitted themselves to determine how far they wish to adopt this institution of Anglo–Saxon origin, and when.
It is true that in the absence of other and countervailing evidence, a law of Congress ... declaring an intention to confer political and civil rights on the inhabitants of the new lands as American citizens, may be properly interpreted to mean an incorporation of it into *167 the Union, as in the case of Louisiana and Alaska. This was one of the chief grounds [for the holding in Rassmussen].... But Alaska was a very different case from that of Porto Rico. It was an enormous territory, very sparsely settled, and offering opportunity for immigration and settlement by American citizens. It was on the American continent and within easy reach of the then United States. It involved none of the difficulties which incorporation of the Philippines and Porto Rico presents....
No right is more precious in a free country than that of having a voice in the election of those who make the laws under which, as good citizens, we must live. Other rights, even the most basic, are illusory if the right to vote is undermined. Our Constitution leaves no room for classification of people in a way that unnecessarily abridges this right.
It is important that I remain here for a bit longer in order to be part of the consensus of this new charter on democracy. That is the most important thing that I can do before departing to go back to Washington, D.C. and attend the important business that awaits me and my other colleagues.... I hope we can move the order of business to the adoption of the Charter because I very much want to express the United States' commitment to democracy in this hemisphere.... And we unite behind it as democratic nations committed to individual liberties....
[W]here not already provided for by existing legislati[on] ... each State Party ... undertakes to take necessary steps, in accordance with its constitutional processes and with the provisions of the present Covenant, to adopt such legislation or other measures as may be necessary to give effect to the rights recognized in the present Covenant.
In a case of actual controversy within its jurisdiction ... any court of the United States, upon the filing of an appropriate pleading, may declare the rights and other legal relations of any interested party seeking such declaration, whether or not further relief is or could be sought.
Every citizen shall have the right and opportunity and without unreasonable restrictions to take part in the conduct of public affairs, directly or through freely chosen representatives and to vote and to be elected at genuine periodic elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret ballot, guaranteeing the free expression of the will of the electors.
It was necessary that treaties should operate as laws on individuals. They ought to be binding upon us the moment they are made. They involve in their nature not only our own rights, but those of foreigners and should be protected by the federal judiciary.
[The] historic patterns of expectation demonstrate that most Framers intended all treaties immediately to become binding on the whole nation, superadded to the laws of the land; to be observed by every member of the nation, to be applied by the courts whenever a cause of action arose from or touched upon them; and to prevail over and preempt any existing state action. In these ways, at least, all treaties (to the extent of their grants, guarantees, or obligations) were to be self-executing.
Under this constitution, therefore, so far as a treaty constitutionally is binding, upon principles of moral obligation, it is also, by the vigor of its own authority, to be executed in fact. It would not otherwise be the supreme law, in the new sense provided for, and it was so before, in a moral sense.... [W]hen the constitution was ratified, the case as to the treaty in question stood upon the same footing, as if every act constituting an impediment to a creditor's recovery had been expressly repealed, and any further act passed, which the public obligation had before required, if a repeal alone would not have been sufficient.
Our constitution declares a treaty to be the law of the land. It is consequently to be regarded in courts of justice as equivalent to an act of the legislature, whenever it operates of itself, without the aid of any legislative provision. But when the terms of the stipulation import a contract, where either of the parties engages to perform a particular act, the treaty addresses itself to the political, not the judicial department; and the legislature must execute the contract before it can be become a rule for the court.
[T]he Senate lacks the constitutional authority to declare the non-self-executing character of a treaty with binding effect on U.S. courts. The Senate has the unicameral power only to consent to ratification of treaties, not to pass domestic legislation. A declaration is not part of a treaty in the sense of modifying the legal obligations created by it. A declaration is merely an expression of an interpretation or of a policy or position. U.S. courts are bound by the Constitution to apply treaties as the law of the land. They are not bound to apply expressions of opinion adopted by the Senate (and concurred in by the President). The courts must undertake their own examination of the terms and context of each provision in a treaty to which the United States is a party and decide whether it is self-executing. The treaty is law. The Senate's declaration is not law. The Senate does not have the power to make law outside the treaty instrument.
A true reservation which becomes a part of a treaty is one which alters the effect of the treaty insofar as it may apply in the relations of the State with the other State or States which may be parties to the treaty. It creates a different relationship between the parties and varies the obligations of the parties proposing it.
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