Reid v. Covert | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Supreme Court of the United States |
||||||
Argued May 3, 1956 Reargued February 27, 1957 Decided June 10, 1957 |
||||||
Full case name | Reid, Superintendent, District of Columbia Jail v. Clarice Covert | |||||
Citations | 354 U.S. 1 (more) 77 S. Ct. 1222; 1 L. Ed. 2d 1148; 1957 U.S. LEXIS 729 |
|||||
Holding | ||||||
The Constitution supersedes all treaties ratified by the United States Senate. The military may not try the civilian wife of a soldier under military jurisdiction. | ||||||
Court membership | ||||||
|
||||||
Case opinions | ||||||
Plurality | Black, joined by Warren, Douglas, Brennan | |||||
Concurrence | Frankfurter | |||||
Concurrence | Harlan | |||||
Dissent | Clark, joined by Burton | |||||
Whittaker took no part in the consideration or decision of the case. | ||||||
Laws applied | ||||||
U.S. Const. Art. VI |
Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1 (1957), is a landmark case in which the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution supersedes international treaties ratified by the United States Senate. According to the decision, "this Court has regularly and uniformly recognized the supremacy of the Constitution over a treaty," although the case itself was with regard to an executive agreement, not a "treaty" in the U.S. legal sense, and the agreement itself has never been ruled unconstitutional.
The case involved Mrs. Covert, who had been convicted by a military tribunal of murdering her husband. At the time of Mrs. Covert's alleged offense, an executive agreement was in effect between the United States and United Kingdom which permitted United States' military courts to exercise exclusive jurisdiction over offenses committed in Great Britain by American servicemen or their dependents. The Court found that "no agreement with a foreign nation can confer power on the Congress, or on any other branch of Government, which is free from the restraints of the Constitution." The Court's core holding of the case is that civilian wives of soldiers may not be tried under military jurisdiction, because the Fifth Amendment's grant for military jurisdiction, i.e. "except in cases arising in the land and naval forces" cannot sweep in the jury-trial requirement reflected in the Fifth and Sixth Amendments.
Justice Harlan's concurrence was premised on the idea that the Constitution applies overseas, unless its application was "impracticable and anomalous." He found that providing Fifth Amendment rights extra-territorially was impracticable and anomalous.
The Court agreed with the petitioners, concluding that as United States citizens they were entitled to the protections of the Bill of Rights, notwithstanding that they committed crimes in foreign soil. The Court distinguish Reid from the Insular Cases: The “Insular Cases” can be distinguished from the present cases in that they involved the power of Congress to provide rules and regulations to govern temporarily territories with wholly dissimilar traditions and institutions.[1]
Justice Black declared: “neither the cases nor their reasoning should be given any further expansion. The concept that the Bill of Rights and other constitutional protections against arbitrary government are inoperant when they become inconvenient or when expediency dictates otherwise is a very dangerous doctrine and if allowed to flourish would destroy the benefit of a written Constitution and undermine the basis of our government”.[1]
The case made Mrs. Covert's lawyer, Frederick Bernays Wiener, famous in legal history; the case represents the only time a lawyer lost in the Supreme Court of the United States but prevailed on rehearing.
Works related to Reid v. Covert at Wikisource