194
Blackmun, J., dissenting
removed from the Article's protection all refugees who "constitute a danger to their families." By the majority's logic, the inclusion of such an exception presumably would render Article 33.1 applicable only to refugees with families.
Far from constituting "an absurd anomaly," ante, at 180, the fact that a state is permitted to "expel or return" a small class of refugees found within its territory but may not seize and return refugees who remain outside its frontiers expresses precisely the objectives and concerns of the Convention. Nonreturn is the rule; the sole exception (neither applicable nor invoked here) is that a nation endangered by a refugee's very presence may "expel or return" him to an unsafe country if it chooses. The tautological observation that only a refugee already in a country can pose a danger to the country "in which he is" proves nothing.
B
The majority further relies on a remark by Baron van Boetzelaer, the Netherlands' delegate at the Convention's negotiating conference, to support its contention that Article 33 does not apply extraterritorially. This reliance, for two reasons, is misplaced. First, the isolated statement of a delegate to the Convention cannot alter the plain meaning of the treaty itself. Second, placed in its proper context, Van Boetzelaer's comment does not support the majority's position.
It is axiomatic that a treaty's plain language must control absent "extraordinarily strong contrary evidence." Sumitomo Shoji America, Inc. v. Avagliano, 457 U. S. 176, 185 (1982). See also United States v. Stuart, 489 U. S. 353, 371 (1989) (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment); id., at 370 (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). Reliance on a treaty's negotiating history (travaux preparatoires) is a disfavored alternative of last resort, appropriate only where the terms of the document are obscure or lead to "manifestly absurd or unreasonable" results. See Vienna
Page: Index Previous 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007