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Missouri v. Holland, 252 U.S. 416 (1920) was a case in which the United States Supreme Court found that the federal government's ability to make treaties is supreme over any state concerns about such treaties having potentially abrogated any states' rights arising under the Tenth Amendment.
Congress had previously passed laws regulating the hunting of migratory waterfowl on the basis that such birds naturally migrated across state and international borders freely and hence the regulation of the harvest of such birds could not realistically be considered to be province solely of indidivual states or groups of states. However, several states objected to this theory and sued to have the law declared unconstitutional, which it subsequently was on the basis that the United States Constitution gave Congress no enumerated power to regulate migratory bird hunting, and hence the regulation of such hunting, if there were to be any, was the province of the states according to the Tenth Amendment.
Congress, dissatisfied with this ruling, then empowered the State Department to negotiate a treaty with the United Kingdom, which at the time still largely handled the foreign relations of Canada, on this topic. This treaty was subsequently ratified and came into force. The State of Missouri sued on the basis that the federal government had no authority to negotiate a treaty on this topic. The case technically revolved around the constitutionality of the implementing legislation, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. The Supreme Court found otherwise, noting that the treaties clause of the Constitution (Article VI, clause 2) makes treaties likewise the "supreme law of the land", co-equal in status to the Constitution itself, and that this trumps any state concern with regard to the provisions of any treaty, meaning that treaty provisions were not subject to questioning by the states under the process of judicial review.
Many persons, especially some conservatives, saw this ruling as dangerous and meaning that Congress could essentially amend the Constitution by the means of treaties with other countries. These concerns came to a head in the Bricker Amendment proposed in the 1950s, which nearly passed Congress with the required two-thirds majority on one occasion. Since that time, the issue has largely faded.
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