Ginsberg, Souter & Bush
If you think the bedfellows in politics aren't strange enough, try constitutional law. The United States Supreme Court, in a six to three opinion, just ruled that the state of Texas can ignore both President Bush and the United Nations and refuse to reopen the case of a Mexican citizen who has been condemned for rape and murder of two teenage girls. The president had made the mistake of siding with the doomed killer, Jose Ernesto Medellin, and our State Department and the United Nations and not with the Founders of America and the writers of the Constitution and, not to put too fine a point on it, he got his legal head handed to him.
Mr. Bush had been in what the Associated Press called "the unusual position" of siding with a Mexican citizen whom, as the AP characterized it, "police prevented from consulting with Mexican diplomats, as provided by international treaty." This upset the International Court of Justice of the United Nations, which sits at the Hague. That court handed down a ruling in 2004 that the convictions of Medellin and 50 other Mexicans on death rows in America violated the Vienna Convention of 1963. Mr. Bush said he disagreed with that decision, but — shockingly — obeyed it. It was one of the weakest moments of Mr. Bush's tenure.
The chief justice of the United States was exceptionally blunt in writing the opinion that brought Mr. Bush up short. The Constitution, he wrote, "allows the president to execute the laws, not make them." The president's position held that the state and federal constitutions were no longer sufficient protections for foreign nationals who turn up in the Texas criminal justice systems. The president's message was that police officers, prosecutors, and judges in the president's home state had better brush up on the 1963 Geneva Convention, if convictions were going to stick. Somehow Mr. Bush got it in his head that if the Geneva rules weren't followed, the World Court had the authority to order the state of Texas to reopen a case.
The important thing to remember is that Medellin received the same due process rights that any American citizen standing in Medellin's blood-soaked shoes would have gotten. The fact that Medellin received nothing more cannot be grounds for his conviction to be cast in doubt. The three dissenters on the high court said that the majority decision meant that the "Nation may well break its word." The majority understood that the word was not given by the State of Texas, which is entitled to run its own justice system without worrying about the rattlesnakes at the Hague. The majority included Justices Roberts, Scalia, Stevens, Thomas, Kennedy, and Alito. The dissenters were Justices Ginsburg, Souter and Breyer — for Mr. Bush, strange bedfellows indeed.
