1.Given Breard’s decision to testify at his trial, against the advice of
counsel, what harm resulted from the failure to notify Breard of his Vienna
Convention rights?
2. When the Supreme Court states in Breard that it “must decide
questions presented on the basis of law,” which law should it use — the
Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, or the domestic “last in time”
rule? Under the “last in time” rule, should the 1996 AEDPA trump the 1969
Vienna Convention, or should the ICJ’s 1998 order in the Paraguay case
trump the AEDPA?
3. Did the Breard Court adequately address the competing foreign
relations and domestic federalism interests at stake? Why did the Executive
Branch, in effect, concede to state officials, such as Virginia’s governor,
power to breach the United States’s international legal obligations?
4. Do you think that the United States took “all measures … at its
disposal” to comply with the ICJ order in the Paraguay case, or, more
broadly, with the Vienna Convention? What else could the United States
have done to comply with the ICJ’s order?
