Supreme Court's Ruling in Chemical Weapons Case Shows Less Deference to Executive Branch
Law professor Ingrid Wuerth, writing in Lawfare, says that the U.S. Supreme Court showed in its recent ruling in Bond v. United States that Chief Justice Roberts' court is showing less deference to the executive branch in interpreting foreign relations matters.
At issue was a woman's conviction under an international chemical-weapons treaty when she put an arsenic-based poison on the mailbox of her husband's lover. The U.S. Supreme Court held that the defendant was improperly convicted under the Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act.
"In making that determination in Bond, the Court afforded no deference to the government’s interpretation of the implementing legislation. Indeed, in Bond the Court’s rejection of the government’s interpretation of the statute was strained, as Justice Scalia argued in his concurring opinion," Wuerth said.
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