318 BURR— THE TREATY-MAKING POWER [April 20, 



that the Court which decided this case, thought it open to them to 

 hold that no treaty on this subject could be self-executing? To so 

 suggest is to make nonsense of the language quoted: " By the Con- 

 stitution a treaty is . . . made of like obligation with an Act of 

 legislation." The judge is speaking of treaties and acts respecting 

 duties on foreign commerce. Is it possible to maintain that the 

 Court thought that a treaty made self -executing in its terms had no 

 efficacy in a case respecting duties? 



The Chinese Exclusion Cases had popular interest and political 

 significance. Necessarily, the ability of the counsel who argued 

 them was high ; all that could be said was presumably said in arguing 

 this long succession of cases before the Supreme Court. Yet 

 nowhere creeps in a suggestion that the provisions of the treaties 

 with China dealing with and regulating commerce and immigration, 

 are ineffective as laws ; indeed, the cases are sufifused with the light 

 of the contrary assumption and constitute direct and positive deci- 

 sions recognizing and establishing the efficacy of treaty provisions 

 pro prior e rig ore. 



In 1 88 1, a treaty with China was ratified looking to the regula- 

 tion by the United States of the immigration of Chinese laborers. 

 In 1882 Congress passed a regulating Act, and in 1884 a supple- 

 mentary Act under which it required of Chinese about temporarily to 

 leave, to secure a certificate which should be the only evidence per- 

 missible to establish a right of reentry. Afterwards, in 1888, Con- 

 gress passed an Act absolutely forbidding the return to the United 

 States of any Chinese who had departed or who should depart. In 

 1884, in the case of Chew Heong vs. United States,^^^ the Court held 

 that the Act of 1884 should not be interpreted to bar out Chinese 

 who had left the country before the Act, and therefore could 

 not be in possession of the required certificate. The chief ground 

 of this decision was that the treaty and the Act had the same 

 authority and should therefore, if possible, be so construed as to be 

 mutually consistent ; so as to avoid the necessary alternative of hold- 

 ing that the later law repealed by implication the treaty. 



" A treaty," said the Court, " that operates of itself without the 



'^112 U. S., 536 (1884). 



