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The Supreme Court thwarts President Bush's expansive vision of executive power.

By Ann Althouse

Texas wins a big victory against the Bush Administration in Medellin v. Texas:

By 6 to 3, the court ruled that the president went too far in 2005, when he decreed that the states had to abide by a 2004 decision by the World Court. That decision found that several dozen Mexican citizens who had been sentenced to death in the United States had not been given the assistance from Mexican diplomats that they were entitled to receive under an international treaty....

Mr. Medellin?s conviction and sentence were upheld in the Texas courts despite the 2004 finding by the World Court, and the Supreme Court concluded on Tuesday that President Bush had no authority to order the state courts to reverse themselves, no matter what the World Court said....

The Supreme Court ruling acknowledged that President Bush, in pressing Texas to take another look at the Medellin case, was acting on behalf of the ?plainly compelling interests? of fostering observance of the Vienna Convention and trying to maintain good relations with other countries.

However, the ruling added, ?The president?s authority to act, as with the exercise of any governmental power, ?must stem either from an act of Congress or from the Constitution itself.? ? The language cited was from a 1952 ruling in which the high court found that President Harry S. Truman did not have the authority to have the federal government seize and run steel mills.

Here's Roberts's opinion.

Full post as published by Althouse on March 25, 2008 (boomark / email).