## Facts

- Frank Cook was the master of the British motor vessel *Mazel Tov*, a private vessel with a speed not exceeding 10 miles per hour.
- U.S. Coast Guard officers stopped and boarded the vessel within four leagues of the Massachusetts coast at a point about 11.5 miles from the nearest land.
- Officers demanded the vessel’s manifest and searched the ship, discovering unmanifested intoxicating liquor cleared from St. Pierre.
- Although the vessel was ostensibly bound for Nassau, evidence suggested it was cruising offshore intending that other boats would eventually take the liquor into the United States.
- The evidence also indicated the vessel did not plan to approach nearer than four leagues, had not communicated with shore, and had not unloaded any cargo.
- The Coast Guard seized the vessel more than 10 miles from the coast and delivered the ship and cargo to customs officials.
- Under § 584 of the Tariff Act of 1930, the Collector of Customs assessed a monetary penalty against Cook for failing to manifest the liquor.
- Cook contested the penalty; the United States prevailed below, and the case reached the Supreme Court.

## Issues

1. Whether the 1924 U.S.–Great Britain treaty governing enforcement against British vessels smuggling liquor limited and superseded the four-league boarding and seizure authority in § 581 of the Tariff Acts as applied to British vessels.
2. Whether Congress’s reenactment of § 581 in identical language in the Tariff Act of 1930 abrogated or displaced the treaty’s limitations.
3. Whether the seizure and resulting penalty were invalid because the vessel was beyond the treaty’s one-hour sailing-distance limit.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed the judgment sustaining the penalty.
- The Court held the 1924 treaty was intended to govern completely the boarding, search, and seizure of British vessels beyond U.S. territorial waters when suspected of liquor smuggling.
- The treaty was self-executing and superseded § 581 to the extent § 581 authorized broader enforcement against British vessels beyond the treaty’s limits.
- The treaty authorized action beyond the three-mile limit only when the suspected vessel was within a distance it could traverse in one hour, and it prohibited exercising those rights beyond that distance.
- Reenacting § 581 in 1930 did not abrogate the treaty because Congress did not clearly express an intent to override treaty obligations.
- Because the *Mazel Tov* was beyond one hour’s sailing distance from the coast, the boarding and seizure were unauthorized, and the penalty could not stand.

## Legal Principles

- A self-executing treaty may directly limit executive enforcement authority and supersede inconsistent statutory authorization as applied to covered subjects and parties.
- A later, specific treaty can qualify an earlier, general statute to the extent of conflict.
- A treaty is not deemed abrogated or modified by a later statute unless Congress clearly expresses that purpose.
- Under the 1924 U.S.–U.K. liquor treaty, U.S. boarding, search, and seizure of British private vessels beyond the three-mile territorial sea were limited to vessels within one hour’s sailing distance from the U.S. coast.

## Conclusion

The Court held that the 1924 U.S.–U.K. liquor enforcement treaty, as a self-executing and controlling limitation, barred Coast Guard seizure of a British vessel beyond one hour’s sailing distance from shore; the resulting customs penalty for unmanifested liquor was therefore reversed.


Cook v. United States, 288 U.S. 102 (1933)