Cite as: 504 U. S. 655 (1992)
Stevens, J., dissenting
of the United States." Ker v. Illinois, 119 U. S., at 443 (emphasis added).29 The exact opposite is true in this case, as it was in Cook.30
The Court's failure to differentiate between private abductions and official invasions of another sovereign's territory also accounts for its misplaced reliance on the 1935 proposal made by the Advisory Committee on Research in International Law. See ante, at 665-666, and n. 13. As the text of that proposal plainly states, it would have rejected the rule of the Ker case.31 The failure to adopt that recommendation does not speak to the issue the Court decides today. The
29 As the Illinois Supreme Court described the action: "The arrest and detention of [Ker] was not by any authority of the general government, and no obligation is implied on the part of the Federal or any State government . . . . The invasion of the sovereignty of Peru, if any wrong was done, was by individuals, perhaps some of them owing no allegiance to the United States, and not by the Federal government." Ker v. Illinois, 110 Ill. 627, 643 (1884).
30 The Martinez incident discussed by the Court, see ante, at 665, n. 11, also involved an abduction by a private party; the reference to the Ker precedent was therefore appropriate in that case. On the other hand, the letter written by Secretary of State Blaine to the Governor of Texas in 1881 unequivocally disapproved of abductions by either party to an extra-dition treaty. In 1984, Secretary of State Schultz expressed the same opinion about an authorized kidnaping of a Canadian national. He remarked that, in view of the extradition treaty between the United States and Canada, it was understandable that Canada was "outraged" by the kidnaping and considered it to be "a violation of the treaty and of international law, as well as an affront to its sovereignty." See Leich, Contemporary Practice of the United States Relating to International Law, 78 Am. J. Int'l L. 200, 208 (1984).
31 Article 16 of the draft provides: "In exercising jurisdiction under this Convention, no State shall prosecute or punish any person who has been brought within its territory or a place subject to its authority by recourse to measures in violation of international law or international convention without first obtaining the consent of the State or States whose rights have been violated by such measures." Harvard Research in International Law, Draft Convention on Jurisdiction with Respect to Crime, 29 Am. J. Int'l L. 435, 623 (Supp. 1935).
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