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



These Chinese Exclusion Cases are followed by innumerable 

 others dealing with one aspect or another of the treaties and the 

 statutes concerning the subject. Every decision approves the cases 

 analyzed above, and, inwoven with the reasoning on which they are 

 based, appears the reiteration of the equal efficacy of treaty provision 

 and statute law upon a subject within the power of Congress. The 

 proposition that a treaty provision has no force until " sanctioned 

 by an act of Congress " would have met with impatient astonishment 

 if uttered to the judges who decided these cases. 



In Geofroy I'S. Riggs^^^ there is a most interesting and positive 

 holding that a treaty may operate of its own force to repeal an act 

 of Congress. The question presented was, in the language of the 

 Court : " Can citizens of France take land in the District of Columbia 

 by descent from citizens of the United States?" On February 27th, 

 1801, by Act of Congress it was provided " that the laws of the State 

 of Maryland as they now exist shall be and continue in force in that 

 part of the said District which was ceded by that State to the United 

 States and by them accepted." After examining the law of Mary- 

 land at that date, the Supreme Court held that it established the dis- 

 ability of aliens to inherit. But, said the Supreme Court, the treaty 

 with France of 1853 provided that the President shall recommend 

 to the several States the passage of acts conferring the right of hold- 

 ing real estate upon Frenchmen ; the word " States " must have been 

 used as equivalent to political communities ; since there could be no 

 plausible motive for discrimination between the States, on the one 

 hand, and the District of Columbia and the Territories, on the other, 

 the intention of the treaty must have been to give French citizens 

 the right of acquiring real estate by descent. Accordingly, the right 

 of the French claimants was sustained. The Act of 1801 was passed 

 by Congress in pursuance of its constitutional power " to exercise 

 exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such district (not 

 exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular States, 

 and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government 

 of the United States. "^^'^ Yet the decision of this case is indisputably 



^^133 U. S., 258 (1889). 

 "' Article I., Sec. ?■ 



