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Show consideration of its undertaking, at its own expense, to deliver onto the bed of the Rio Grande "at the point where the head works of the Acequia Madre, known as the Old Mexican Canal, now exist above the city of Juarez, Mexico,'1 a definite quantity of water from month to month and year to year. 149 While the treaty expressly negatived recognition by the United States of the just claims of Mexico to a portion of the waters of this international river, for which that nation had been contending during the preceding decade and longer, it nevertheless set a precedent which future American statesmen will not find it easy to ignore.150 ¦M-y convention between the United States and Mexico providing for the equitable distribution of the waters of the Rio Grande for irrigation pur- poses, May 21, 1906, 34 Stat. at L, 2953, 1 Malloy's Treaties, 1202« This remarkable treaty provides for the delivery by the United States to Mexico of sixty thousand acre feet of water annually according to a detailed monthly schedule subject to variation in times of great drouth. It was the first as- sertion by the United States of its treaty-making power over the waters of a river which the federal government cannot control within the United States for irrigation or reclamation purposes, but which none-the-less may be con- trolled by the United States for the purpose of fulfilling its treaty stipu- lations~-and presumably its obligations under international law independent of any treaty- In Neely v Henkel, 180 U.S. 109, 121, 21 Sup. Ct. 302, 306, 1+5 L. Ed. 448, 456 (1901), the court said "The power of Congress to make all laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution as well the powers enumerated in Section 8 of Article I of the Constitution, as all others vested in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or the officers thereof, includes the power to enact such legislation as is appropriate to give efficacy to any stipulations which it is competent for the President by and with the advice and consent of the Senate to insert in a treaty with a foreign power *11 (italics added.) For a later decision to the same effect, see Missouri v. Holland, 252 U.S. iO-6, 1+0 Sup. Ct. 3&2, 61+L. Ed. 6I4I, 11 A*L»R. 981+ (1920), aff'g 258 Fed, 1+79 (D»C. Mo. 1919), upholding the federal power to enforce within a State a migratory bird treaty, although previously it had been pointed out in Geer v, Connecticut, l6l U.S. 5X9, 16 Sup. Ct. 600, 1+0 L« Ed. 793 (I896), that the United States had no power so to act in the absence of a treaty obligation. Congress provided in effect for carrying out the provisions of the Rio Grande treaty with Mexico. Act of Feb. 25, 1905, c. 798, 33 Stat. at L. 8II+5 Act of June 12, 1906, c, 3288, 3I+ Stat. at L* 259; Act of March 1+, I907, c. 2918, 31+ Stat. at L. 1295, I357. See Burley v. United States, 179. Fed. 3., 33 L»R.A. (N.S.) 807 (C.C«A. 9th Cir. 1910), aff«g 172 Fed. 615 (C.C- Idaho 1909)* where these acts of Congress are discussed. This treaty is still in force, and the United States is annually deliver- ing to Mexico the quantity of water required by the treaty. ¦^5PAccording to an opinion of United States Attorney General Judson Harmon, 21 Ops. Attry. Gen. (U.S.) 27lj., Mexico had no rights, either under tlie Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo as supplemented by later treaties or under inter- national law, to oomplain if the United States took all the waters of the Rio |
