Santa Clara Law Santa Clara Law Digital Commons Faculty Publications Faculty Scholarship 2016 The eD ath of Treaty Supremacy: An Invisible Constitutional Change David Sloss Santa Clara University School of Law,
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[email protected]. The Death of Treaty Supremacy: An Invisible Constitutional Change David L. Sloss (Oxford Univ. Press, forthcoming 2016) Introduction When the Framers of the U.S. Constitution met in Philadelphia in 1787, they drafted a Constitution designed to ensure that States would not violate the nation’s treaty commitments. Before adoption of the Constitution, Alexander Hamilton noted, “the treaties of the United States . [were] liable to the infractions of thirteen different legislatures . The faith, the reputation, the peace of the whole Union, are thus continually at the mercy of the prejudices, the passions, and the interests of every member of which it is composed.”1 The Framers sought to rectify the problem of State treaty violations by vesting power over treaty compliance in the federal government. The draft Constitution sparked vigorous debates in the period from 1787 to 1789.