## Facts

- In 1793, the United States was at peace with Great Britain while war existed between France and Great Britain.
- Gideon Henfield, a United States citizen, served aboard the French privateer *Citoyen Genêt* under a French commission.
- While serving on the privateer, Henfield participated in the capture of a British vessel on the high seas.
- Henfield brought the captured British vessel into the port of Philadelphia.
- The federal government treated Henfield’s conduct as a breach of U.S. neutrality and of obligations arising under treaties and the law of nations, despite the absence of a federal neutrality statute at the time.

## Issues

1. Whether treaties and the law of nations, as part of the “supreme law of the land,” could supply a basis for a federal criminal indictment against a U.S. citizen absent a statute defining the offense.
2. Whether federal courts possessed common-law criminal jurisdiction to punish offenses against the law of nations or U.S. sovereignty without congressional implementation.
3. Whether a neutral nation may punish its citizens for participating, under a foreign commission, in hostilities against a nation at peace with the United States.

## Decision

- Henfield was tried in the United States Circuit Court for the District of Pennsylvania before a jury.
- The jury acquitted Henfield.
- In jury charges and case reporting, the court was described as accepting that treaties and the law of nations could be enforced through federal indictment and that federal courts could proceed using common-law criminal forms even without a statute.

## Legal Principles

- Treaties are part of the public and supreme law of the land, and a citizen’s violation of treaty obligations may be punishable in federal court by indictment.
- A neutral state may treat its citizens’ participation in a belligerent attack against another belligerent as an offense against the law of nations and punish it.
- Federal courts were described as having jurisdiction over offenses against the law of nations and, in some accounts of the case, authority to punish such offenses according to common-law procedures despite the absence of a congressional criminal statute.

## Conclusion

Henfield’s prosecution tested early federal enforcement of neutrality through treaties and the law of nations without statutory authorization; although the jury acquitted, the case became associated with broad claims of federal judicial power to criminally enforce international obligations and neutrality-related offenses.


Henfield’s Case, 11 F. Cas. 1099 (C.C.D. Pa. 1793)