286 WRIGHT— POWER TO MEET RESPONSIBILITIES. 



Toscano**' the Federal District Court held that insurgent Mexican 

 troops entering the territory and interned according to provisions of 

 the Vth Hague Convention, under executive authority, were entitled 

 to no relief under constitutional guarantees. " Due process of law " 

 had been given them through executive compliance with the treaty, 

 which was itself " supreme law of the land." It appears that the 

 President has considerable independent power to authorize military 

 and administrative action when necessary to enforce treaties or 

 statutes, but in view of the wide powers expressly conferred upon 

 him by acts of Congress it is now seldom necessary for him to go 

 outside of such express delegations. 



D. Enforcement by the Courts. 



128. Early Assumptions of Common Law Criminal Jurisdiction by 

 Federal Courts. 

 In his first neutrality proclamation of April 22, 1793, President 

 Washington stated that he had :*' 



"given instructions to those officers to whom it belongs to cause prosecutions 

 to be instituted against all persons who shall within the cognizance of the 

 courts of the United States violate the law of nations with respect to the 

 powers at war or any of them." 



On the basis of this proclamation prosecution was brought against 

 Gideon Henfield for aiding in fitting out and serving on a vessel 

 for the use of France then at war with Great Britain. The United 

 States circuit court of Pennsylvania, composed of Justices Wilson, 

 Iredell and Peters, asked the Grand Jury to return an indictment 

 against him for an offense against the law of nations. Although 

 the Grand Jury refused to indict, the opinion of the court was clear 

 that federal courts had jurisdiction to punish such offenses even 

 though no express statute defined the offense or conferred the juris- 

 diction. Justice Jay expressed a similar opinion in another charge 

 to the Grand Jury and Attorney General Randolph asserted it in 

 an official opinion.®^ 



^^ Ex parte Toscano, 208 Fed. 938 (1913). 

 8^ II Stat. 753; Richardson, Messages, i : 157. 



88 /n re Henfield, Fed. Cas. No. 6360, and ibid., p. 11 16; Am. State Pap., 

 For. Rel., i : 151. 



