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The Green Bag
Association did adopt, on motion of Judge Alton B. Parker, a resolution approving the plan of fitly observing the approaching centenary of peace be tween Great Britain and the United States, a committee of five being appointed to co-operate with the Joint International Committee already in existence in arranging the celebra tion. Mr. Kellogg's Paper Mr. Frank B. Kellogg, the president of the Association, made in his paper on "Treaty-Making Power," a strong argument in support of the supremacy of the treaty-making power of the United States over conflicting legisla tion adopted by the several states. He reviewed the historical development of this principle, and considered at some length the decisions of the Supreme Court in which it has been involved. He went a bit too far in maintaining that Congress possesses a plenary power to legislate upon subjects of an inter national character — in saying that while it may well be the policy of the federal government to leave the regulation of the rights to engage in business and to own property to the states, and that while there are many subjects "which it might be found inexpedient for the government to control by treaties with foreign nations," nevertheless "the power exists, and whenever in the judgment of the President and the Senate it be comes necessary for the federal Govern ment to exercise this prerogative, it is undoubtedly conferred by the Con stitution." The federal Government un doubtedly possesses the right to remove, by treaty, disabilities of any kind im posed by the state of California on aliens which are not borne by native citizens of that state; but it could not
confer special privileges with regard to the holding of land or ownership of other property, so as to favor aliens more than native citizens, without dealing with a matter that would be an improper one for international negotiation and without exercising a larger prerogative than the Constitution recognizes or per mits. The point which Mr. Kellogg wished doubtless to emphasize, namely the power of the federal Government to exempt by treaty the Japanese from the operation of laws aiming at dis crimination against them, was well taken. Mr. Kellogg made it clear that he was not advocating indiscriminate admission of alien races to all the rights of native citizens. What he did empha size — and it was well that it should have been so clearly emphasized in con nection with our recent dispute with Japan — was that subjects of this sort are properly to be approached solely as national questions, and not as subjects for independent state action. A Sound Judiciary One of the most gratifying features of the meeting at Montreal was the action of the distinguished former Presi dent of the United States in throwing the weight of his great influence, on the occasion of his first notable appearance in public after leaving the White House, into the cause of an appointive judiciary with a life tenure. Mr. Taft's paper was chiefly notable as reflecting general conditions among the American judi ciary, which came within his observa tion during his four years' service in Washington, and for the lack of reserve with which he now felt free to express his estimate of the judiciary of those states wherein the elective system ob tains. Consequently, the paper was so enriched by reflections based upon direct
