Safety National Casualty Corp. v. Certain Underwriters at Lloyd's

JENNIFER W. ELROD, Circuit Judge,

with whom

JERRY E. SMITH and EMILIO M. GARZA, Circuit Judges,

join, dissenting:

Today the court concludes that an Act of Congress is not really an Act of Congress. In doing so, it holds that a non-self-executing treaty,1 the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards2 (Convention), preempts a state law. Because a non-self-executing treaty cannot itself provide a rule of decision in U.S. courts, the only candidate for a source of federal law with preemptive force under the Supremacy Clause is the statute that implements the treaty.…