Missouri v. Holland

Missouri v. Holland
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued March 2, 1920 Decided April 19, 1920
Full case name	State of Missouri v. Holland, United States Game Warden
Citations	252 U.S. 416 (more) 40 S. Ct. 382; 64 L. Ed. 641; 1920 U.S. LEXIS 1520; 11 A.L.R. 984; 18 Ohio L. Rep. 61
Prior history	Appeal from the District Court of the United States for the Western District of Missouri
Holding
Protection of a State's quasi-sovereign right to regulate the taking of game is a sufficient jurisdictional basis, apart from any pecuniary interest, for a bill by a State to enjoin enforcement of federal regulations over the subject alleged to be unconstitutional. Treaties made by the federal government are supreme over any state concerns about such treaties having abrogated any states' rights arising under the Tenth Amendment.
Court membership
Case opinions
Majority	Holmes, joined by White, McKenna, Day, McReynolds, Brandeis, Clarke
Dissent	Van Devanter, Pitney
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. X

In Missouri v. Holland, 252 U.S. 416 (1920), the United States Supreme Court held that protection of a State's quasi-sovereign right to regulate the taking of game is a sufficient jurisdictional basis, apart from any pecuniary interest, for a State to enjoin enforcement of an unconstitutional federal regulation, but that the federal government's implementation of the treaty at issue was constitutional, trumping state concerns about enumerated powers or abrogation of states' rights arising under the Tenth Amendment. The case revolved around the constitutionality of implementing the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. It is also notable for Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' reference to the idea of a living constitution.

Previously, Congress had passed laws regulating the hunting of migratory waterfowl on the basis that such birds naturally migrated across state and international borders freely, and hence the regulation of the harvest of such birds could not realistically be considered to be province solely of individual states or groups of states. However, several states objected to this theory and successfully sued to have the law declared unconstitutional, on the premise that the United States Constitution gave Congress no enumerated power to regulate migratory bird hunting, and hence the regulation of such hunting, if there was to be any, was the province of the states according to the Tenth Amendment.

Congress, disgruntled with this ruling, then empowered the State Department to negotiate with the United Kingdom, which at the time still largely handled the foreign relations of Canada, a treaty pertaining to this issue. The treaty was subsequently ratified and came into force, and required the Federal Government to enact laws regulating the capturing, killing, or selling of protected migratory birds, an obligation that it fulfilled in the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. The state of Missouri then sued on the basis that the federal government had no authority to negotiate a treaty on this topic.