178
Opinion of the Court
less, because the history of the 1980 Act does disclose a general intent to conform our law to Article 33 of the Convention, it might be argued that the extraterritorial obligations imposed by Article 33 were so clear that Congress, in acceding to the Protocol, and then in amending the statute to harmonize the two, meant to give the latter a correspondingly extraterritorial effect. Or, just as the statute might have imposed an extraterritorial obligation that the Convention does not (the argument we have just rejected), the Convention might have established an extraterritorial obligation which the statute does not; under the Supremacy Clause, that broader treaty obligation might then provide the controlling rule of law.35 With those possibilities in mind we shall consider both the text and negotiating history of the Convention itself.
Like the text and the history of § 243(h), the text and negotiating history of Article 33 of the United Nations Convention are both completely silent with respect to the Article's possible application to actions taken by a country outside its own borders. Respondents argue that the Protocol's broad remedial goals require that a nation be prevented from repatriating refugees to their potential oppressors whether or not the refugees are within that nation's borders. In spite
numbers of aliens.' S. Exec. Rep. No. 14, supra, at 19. It was also believed that apparent differences between the Protocol and existing statutory law could be reconciled by the Attorney General in administration and did not require any modification of statutory language. See, e. g., S. Exec. K, supra, at VIII." INS v. Stevic, 467 U. S., at 417-418.
35 United States Const., Art. VI, cl. 2, provides: "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land . . . ." In Murray v. Schooner Charming Betsy, 2 Cranch 64, 117-118 (1804), Chief Justice Marshall wrote that "an act of congress ought never to be construed to violate the law of nations if any other possible construction remains . . . ." See also Weinberger v. Rossi, 456 U. S. 25, 32 (1982); Clark v. Allen, 331 U. S. 503, 508-511 (1947); Cook v. United States, 288 U. S. 102, 118-120 (1933).
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