In Missouri v. Holland, 252 U.S. 416 (1920), the Supreme Court held 7–2 that a valid treaty can authorize federal legislation Congress would otherwise lack the enumerated power to enact, and that the Tenth Amendment does not block such laws. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the opinion, upholding the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 against Missouri’s challenge. The core holding still stands, though later cases have set boundaries around it.
What the Court Decided
Holmes built the ruling on three constitutional provisions working together: the Treaty Clause in Article II, the Supremacy Clause in Article VI, and the Necessary and Proper Clause in Article I. His central move was a textual distinction. Acts of Congress must be made “in pursuance of” the Constitution, meaning they must fall within Congress’s enumerated powers. Treaties, by contrast, need only be made “under the authority of the United States.” Holmes read that difference as deliberate and consequential.1Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Missouri v. Holland – 252 U.S. 416 (1920)
From that reading followed the rule the case is known for. If a treaty is valid, then a statute enacted to carry it out is also valid as a “necessary and proper” means of executing federal power, even if Congress could not have passed the same statute standing alone. The treaty power, in other words, operates as an independent source of federal authority. Whatever the Tenth Amendment reserves to the states, Holmes reasoned, it does not reserve powers already delegated to the national government through the treaty-making process.
Justices Van Devanter and Pitney dissented but did not write an opinion.
Why the Case Reached the Court
The treaty route was a workaround for a constitutional problem Congress had already run into. The Weeks-McLean Act of 1913 had given the Secretary of Agriculture authority to regulate hunting seasons for migratory birds nationwide, declaring the birds to be “within the custody and protection of the Government of the United States.” By 1917, two state supreme courts and three federal district courts had struck it down, finding no enumerated power that let Congress regulate migratory wildlife inside state borders. United States v. Shauver (1914) put it plainly: the court could locate no constitutional provision authorizing Congress to protect or regulate migratory game within a state.2U.S. Department of the Interior. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act Does Not Prohibit Incidental Take (M-37050)
With Shauver headed toward the Supreme Court and the Weeks-McLean Act likely to fall, federal wildlife advocates pivoted. In 1916, the United States signed a treaty with Great Britain, acting on behalf of Canada, in which both nations agreed to establish hunting seasons for game birds and to end all hunting of insectivorous birds. Congress then passed the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 to implement the treaty as enforceable domestic law.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. United States Code Title 16 Chapter 7 Subchapter II – Taking, Killing, or Possessing Migratory Birds Unlawful
Missouri sued to stop Ray P. Holland, a federal game warden, from enforcing the Act inside the state. The state raised the same constitutional objection that had killed Weeks-McLean, plus one more.
Missouri’s Argument and Why It Lost
Missouri leaned on two ideas. First, the Tenth Amendment: because the Constitution does not explicitly grant Congress the power to regulate migratory birds, that authority remained with the states. Second, the state ownership doctrine: under Geer v. Connecticut (1896), states owned the wild animals within their borders and controlled their management. Missouri argued that a treaty could not manufacture a federal power that would otherwise not exist, and that if Congress lacked the power to pass Weeks-McLean, signing a treaty could not cure the defect.1Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Missouri v. Holland – 252 U.S. 416 (1920)
Holmes rejected both arguments in one stroke. He did not need to dismantle the state ownership doctrine to rule for the federal government. He simply held that whatever property interest a state might claim in wildlife, the treaty power outranked it. And the Tenth Amendment, he wrote, could not stop federal action supported by a valid treaty, because the treaty power itself sits among the powers delegated to the national government.
The National Interest Reasoning
Holmes did more than parse constitutional text. He added a substantive argument: the treaty addressed “a national interest of very nearly the first magnitude.” Migratory birds cross state and international lines, so no state acting alone could protect them. “It is not sufficient to rely upon the States,” Holmes wrote, because their jurisdiction stops at their borders. Without the treaty and its statute, he warned, “there soon might be no birds for any powers to deal with.”1Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Missouri v. Holland – 252 U.S. 416 (1920)
The opinion also contains one of Holmes’s most cited lines on constitutional interpretation: “The case before us must be considered in the light of our whole experience, and not merely in that of what was said a hundred years ago.” He dismissed Missouri’s Tenth Amendment argument by writing that no “invisible radiation” from that amendment could keep the federal government from addressing a problem that required international cooperation.
Later Limits on the Ruling
Holland’s language worried people almost immediately. If a treaty could authorize a statute Congress could not pass alone, critics asked, what stopped the treaty power from becoming a route around the entire scheme of enumerated federal powers? That concern has driven every major legal and political response to the case.
Reid v. Covert (1957)
The most important limit came in Reid v. Covert, where the Court held that “no agreement with a foreign nation can confer power on the Congress, or on any other branch of Government, which is free from the restraints of the Constitution.” Treaties cannot override individual constitutional rights, including protections under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments. The Court did not overrule Holland. It read the case narrowly, pointing out that Holmes had “carefully noted that the treaty involved was not inconsistent with any specific provision of the Constitution.” Holland concerned the Tenth Amendment; it did not touch the Bill of Rights.4Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Reid v. Covert – 354 U.S. 1 (1957)
The Bricker Amendment
The political response was the Bricker Amendment. In the early 1950s, Senator John Bricker of Ohio proposed a constitutional amendment that would have required all treaties to comply with the Constitution, prohibited self-executing treaties absent separate congressional legislation, and blocked treaties from giving Congress powers beyond those already enumerated. It was aimed squarely at fears that Holland could put international agreements ahead of the Constitution. A version failed in the Senate in 1954 by a 42–50 vote, short of the two-thirds supermajority a constitutional amendment requires.
Bond v. United States (2014)
Bond tested how far a treaty-implementing statute could reach into ordinary local conduct. Federal prosecutors used the statute implementing the Chemical Weapons Convention to charge a woman who spread irritating chemicals on a romantic rival’s doorknob and car door. The Supreme Court held that the statute did not reach such a purely local offense, reasoning that federal law should not be read to intrude on traditional state criminal authority “unless Congress has clearly indicated that the law should have such reach.” As the Court put it, “the global need to prevent chemical warfare does not require the Federal Government to reach into the kitchen cupboard.”5Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Bond v. United States – 572 U.S. 844 (2014)
The defendant asked the Court to confront Holland directly and cabin or overrule it. The majority declined, resolving the case on statutory interpretation instead. Holland’s core holding was left intact, but Bond signaled that courts will read treaty-implementing statutes cautiously when they threaten to sweep in local conduct states have always handled.
Where the Doctrine Stands Today
Missouri v. Holland remains good law on its central point: a valid treaty can support federal legislation that Congress might not be able to enact on its own, and the Tenth Amendment does not stand in the way. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act it upheld has protected migratory bird species for more than a century.
The boundaries around the doctrine are what have shifted. Reid v. Covert established that the treaty power cannot override the Bill of Rights. Bond established that courts will not stretch treaty-implementing statutes to cover ordinary local conduct without a clear signal from Congress. Between those two limits, Holland’s rule still governs: when a genuine national interest requires international cooperation, the federal government’s treaty power can reach subjects that would otherwise belong to the states.