Can Article III courts accede to treaties?
The debate over foreign law’s role Supreme Court jurisprudence is well-known. But this was new to me: the Court, in United States v. Reliable Transfer Co., 421 U.S. 397, 403–04 (1975), based its decision to overturn the divided damages rule in maritime collisions in part on the fact that the US was, at the time, “virtually alone among the world’s major maritime nations in not adhering” to the Brussels Collision Liability Convention of 1910. What makes this different from the foreign death penalty practices cited in Roper v. Simmons, of course, is that the Convention was expressly open to the United States to join. Of course, the Supreme Court can’t go so far as to formally accede, but it’s interesting that it would self-consciously impel informal compliance with the treaty.
