## Facts

- Alaskan Native subsistence whalers, represented by Hopson, traditionally hunted bowhead whales.
- The 1946 International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling established the International Whaling Commission (IWC), empowered to adopt and amend a regulatory Schedule, including quotas.
- In 1977, the IWC voted to eliminate a native-subsistence exception for bowhead whales; the United States abstained but later negotiated a limited quota for continued subsistence whaling.
- The Secretary of Commerce, acting under the International Whaling Convention Act of 1949, promulgated federal regulations implementing the IWC’s bowhead restrictions.
- Plaintiffs challenged the regulations as exceeding statutory authority, arguing (i) the IWC lacked authority to eliminate the subsistence exception and (ii) the Commerce Department’s implementing rules were unauthorized or inconsistent with governing U.S. statutes.
- The government sought dismissal, contending the dispute was committed to the political branches because it implicated treaty implementation and foreign relations.

## Issues

1. Whether a federal court has subject-matter jurisdiction to hear a statutory challenge to federal regulations implementing IWC decisions under the International Whaling Convention Act.
2. Whether the challenge was barred as a non-justiciable political question because it arose in a foreign-affairs and treaty-implementation context.
3. Whether the asserted foreign-affairs discretion rendered the agency action effectively unreviewable when plaintiffs alleged the agency exceeded congressionally set limits.

## Decision

- The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court’s dismissal and remanded.
- The court held the district court had jurisdiction to consider plaintiffs’ statutory claims.
- The court held the case did not present a non-justiciable political question because plaintiffs sought statutory interpretation and review of agency compliance with statutory limits, not adjudication of the wisdom of foreign policy choices.
- The court left the merits of the statutory challenges for the district court to address on remand, including the appropriate scope of administrative-law review.

## Legal Principles

- Courts may review whether executive officials and agencies acted within statutory authority when implementing treaty-based or convention-based obligations.
- Foreign-affairs implications alone do not convert a statutory-interpretation dispute into a political question.
- The political question doctrine generally bars review only where the claim requires courts to decide matters constitutionally committed to the political branches or lacking judicially manageable standards; statutory-limit questions typically provide manageable standards.
- Claims of broad, unreviewable administrative discretion are insufficient to preclude judicial review where plaintiffs plausibly allege the agency exceeded constraints imposed by Congress.

## Conclusion

The Ninth Circuit held that federal courts may adjudicate statutory challenges to regulations implementing international whaling decisions and that the political question doctrine did not bar review merely because the regulations related to foreign affairs; it reversed the dismissal and remanded for consideration of the statutory claims and the scope of review.


Hopson v. Kreps, 622 F.2d 1375 (9th Cir. 1980)