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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________
No. 16–254
_________________
WATER SPLASH, INC., PETITIONER
v. TARA
MENON
on writ of certiorari to the court of appeals
of texas, fourteenth district
[May 22, 2017]
Justice Alito delivered the opinion of the
Court.
This case concerns the scope of the Convention
on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in
Civil and Commercial Matters, Nov. 15, 1965 (Hague Service
Convention), 20 U. S. T. 361, T. I. A. S.
No. 6638. The purpose of that multilateral treaty is to simplify,
standardize, and generally improve the process of serving documents
abroad. Preamble,
ibid.; see
Volkswagenwerk
Aktiengesellschaft v.
Schlunk, 486 U. S. 694, 698
(1988) . To that end, the Hague Service Convention specifies
certain approved methods of service and “pre-empts inconsistent
methods of service” wherever it applies.
Id., at 699. Today
we address a question that has divided the lower courts: whether
the Convention prohibits service by mail. We hold that it does
not.
I
A
Petitioner Water Splash is a corporation that
produces aquatic playground systems. Respondent Menon is a former
employee of Water Splash. In 2013, Water Splash sued Menon in state
court in Texas, alleging that she had begun working for a
competitor while still employed by Water Splash. 472
S. W. 3d 28, 30 (Tex. App. 2015). Water Splash asserted
several causes of action, including unfair competition, conversion,
and tortious interference with business relations. Because Menon
resided in Can-ada, Water Splash sought and obtained permission to
effect service by mail.
Ibid. After Menon declined to answer
or otherwise enter an appearance, the trial court issued a default
judgment in favor of Water Splash. Menon moved to set aside the
judgment on the ground that she had not been properly served, but
the trial court denied the motion.
Ibid.
Menon appealed, arguing that service by mail
does not “comport with the requirements of the Hague Service
Convention.”
Ibid. The Texas Court of Appeals majority sided
with Menon and held that the Convention prohibits service of
process by mail.
Id., at 32. Justice Christopher dissented.
Id., at 34. The Court of Appeals declined to review the
matter en banc, App. 95–96, and the Texas Supreme Court denied
discretionary review,
id., at 97–98.
The disagreement between the panel majority and
Justice Christopher tracks a broader conflict among courts as to
whether the Convention permits service through postal channels.
Compare,
e.g., Bankston v
. Toyota Motor Corp., 889
F. 2d 172, 173–174 (CA8 1989) (holding that the Convention
prohibits service by mail), and
Nuovo Pignone, SpA v.
S
torman Asia M/V, 310 F. 3d 374, 385 (CA5 2002) (same),
with
, e.g., Brockmeyer v.
May, 383 F. 3d
798, 802 (CA9 2004) (holding that the Convention allows service by
mail), and
Ackermann v.
Levine, 788 F. 2d 830,
838–840 (CA2 1986) (same). We granted certiorari to resolve that
conflict. 580 U. S. ___ (2016).
B
The “primary innovation” of the Hague Service
Convention—set out in Articles 2–7—is that it “requires each state
to establish a central authority to receive requests for service of
documents from other countries.”
Schlunk,
supra, at
698. When a central authority receives an appropriate request, it
must serve the documents or arrange for their service, Art. 5, and
then provide a certificate of service, Art. 6.
Submitting a request to a central authority is
not, however, the only method of service approved by the
Convention. For example, Article 8 permits service through
diplomatic and consular agents; Article 11 provides that any two
states can agree to methods of service not otherwise specified in
the Convention; and Article 19 clarifies that the Convention does
not preempt any internal laws of its signatories that permit
service from abroad via methods not otherwise allowed by the
Convention.
At issue in this case is Article 10 of the
Convention, the English text of which reads as follows:
“Provided the State of destination does not
object, the present Convention shall not interfere with—
“(a) the freedom to send judicial documents, by
postal channels, directly to persons abroad,
“(b) the freedom of judicial officers,
officials or other competent persons of the State of origin to
effect service of judicial documents directly through the judicial
officers, officials or other competent persons of the State of
destination,
“(c) the freedom of any person interested in a
judicial proceeding to effect service of judicial documents
directly through the judicial officers, officials or other
competent persons of the State of destination.” 20
U. S. T., at 363.
Articles 10(b) and 10(c), by their plain terms,
address additional methods of service that are permitted by the
Convention (unless the receiving state objects). By contrast,
Article 10(a) does not expressly refer to “service.” The question
in this case is whether, despite this textual difference, the
Article 10(a) phrase “send judicial documents” encompasses sending
documents
for the purposes of service.
II
A
In interpreting treaties, “we begin with the
text of the treaty and the context in which the written words are
used.”
Schlunk, 486 U. S., at 699 (internal quotation
marks omitted). For present purposes, the key word in Article 10(a)
is “send.” This is a broad term,[
1] and there is no apparent reason why it would exclude
the transmission of documents for a particular purpose (namely,
service). Moreover, the structure of the Hague Service Convention
strongly counsels against such a reading.
The key structural point is that the scope of
the Convention is limited to service of documents. Several elements
of the Convention indicate as much. First, the preamble states that
the Convention is intended “to ensure that judicial and
extrajudicial documents
to be served abroad shall be brought
to the notice of the addressee in sufficient time.” (Emphasis
added.) And Article 1 defines the Convention’s scope by stating
that the Convention “shall apply in all cases, in civil or
commercial matters, where there is occasion to transmit a judicial
or extrajudicial document
for service abroad.” (Emphasis
added.) Even the Convention’s full title reflects that the
Convention concerns “Service Abroad.”
We have also held as much.
Schlunk, 486
U. S., at 701 (stating that the Convention “applies only to
documents transmitted for service abroad”). As we explained, a
preliminary draft of Article 1 was criticized “because it suggested
that the Convention could apply to transmissions abroad that do not
culminate in service.”
Ibid. The final version of Article 1,
however, “eliminates this possibility.”
Ibid. The wording of
Article 1 makes clear that the Convention “applies only when there
is both transmission of a document from the requesting state to the
receiving state, and service upon the person for whom it is
intended.”
Ibid.
In short, the text of the Convention reveals,
and we have explicitly held, that the scope of the Convention is
limited to service of documents. In light of that, it would be
quite strange if Article 10(a)—apparently alone among the
Convention’s provisions—concerned something other than service of
documents.
Indeed, under that reading, Article 10(a) would
be superfluous. The function of Article 10 is to ensure that,
absent objection from the receiving state, the Convention “shall
not interfere” with the activities described in 10(a), 10(b) and
10(c). But Article 1 already “eliminates [the] possibility” that
the Convention would apply to any communications that “do not
culminate in service,”
id., at 701, so it is hard to imagine
how the Convention could interfere with any non-service
communications. Accordingly, in order for Article 10(a) to do any
work, it
must pertain to sending documents for the purposes
of service.
Menon attempts to avoid this superfluity problem
by suggesting that Article 10(a) does refer to serving
documents—but only
some documents. Specifically, she makes a
distinction between two categories of service. According to Menon,
Article 10(a) does not apply to
service of process (which we
have defined as “a formal delivery of documents that is legally
sufficient to charge the defendant with notice of a pending
action,”
id., at 700)). But Article 10(a) does apply, Menon
suggests, to the service of “post-answer judicial documents” (that
is, any additional documents which may have to be served later in
the litigation). Brief for Respondent 30–31. The problem with this
argument is that it lacks any plausible textual footing in Article
10.[
2]
If the drafters wished to limit Article 10(a) to
a particular subset of documents, they presumably would have said
so—as they did, for example, in Article 15, which refers to “a writ
of summons or an equivalent document.” Instead, Article 10(a) uses
the term “judicial documents”—the same term that is featured in
10(b) and 10(c). Accord-ingly, the notion that Article 10(a)
governs a different set of documents than 10(b) or 10(c) is hard to
fathom. And it certainly derives no support from the use of the
word “send,” whose ordinary meaning is broad enough to cover the
transmission of
any judicial documents (including
litigation-initiating documents). Nothing about the word “send”
suggests that Article 10(a) is
narrower than 10(b) and
10(c), let alone that Article 10(a) is somehow limited to
“post-answer” documents.
Ultimately, Menon wishes to read the phrase
“send judicial documents” as “serve a subset of judicial
documents.” That is an entirely atextual reading, and Menon offers
no sustained argument in support of it. Therefore, the only way to
escape the conclusion that Article 10(a) includes service of
process is to assert that it does not cover service of documents at
all—and, as shown above, that reading is structurally implausible
and renders Article 10(a) superfluous.
B
The text and structure of the Hague Service
Convention, then, strongly suggest that Article 10(a) pertains to
service of documents. The only significant counterargument is that,
unlike many other provisions in the Convention, Article 10(a) does
not include the word “service” or any of its variants. The Article
10(a) phrase “send judicial documents,” the argument goes, should
mean something different than the phrase “effect service of
judicial documents” in the other two subparts of Article 10.
This argument does not win the day for several
reasons. First, it must contend with the compelling structural
considerations discussed above. See
Air France v.
Saks, 470 U. S. 392, 397 (1985) (treaty interpretation
must take account of the “context in which the written words are
used”); cf.
University of Tex. Southwestern Medical Center
v.
Nassar, 570 U. S. ___, ___ (2013) (slip op., at 13)
(“Just as Congress’ choice of words is presumed to be deliberate,
so too are its structural choices”).
Second, the argument fails on its own terms.
Assume for a second that the word “send” must mean something other
than “serve.” That would not imply that Article 10(a) must
exclude service. Instead, “send[ing]” could be a broader
concept that includes service but is not limited to it. That
reading of the word “send” is probably
more plausible than
interpreting it to exclude service, and it does not create the same
superfluity problem.[
3]
Third, it must be remembered that the French
version of the Convention is “equally authentic” to the English
version.
Schlunk, 486 U. S., at 699. Menon does not
seri-ously engage with the Convention’s French text. But the word
“adresser”—the French counterpart to the word “send” in Article
10(a)—“has been consistently interpreted as meaning service or
notice.” Hague Conference on Private Int’l Law, Practical Handbook
on the Operation of the Service Convention ¶279, p. 91 (4th ed.
2016).
In short, the most that could possibly be said
for this argument is that it creates an ambiguity as to Article
10(a)’s meaning. And when a treaty provision is ambiguous, the
Court “may look beyond the written words to the history of the
treaty, the negotiations, and the practical construction adopted by
the parties.”
Schlunk,
supra, at 700 (internal
quotation marks omitted). As discussed below, these traditional
tools of treaty interpretation comfortably resolve any lingering
ambiguity in Water Splash’s favor.
III
Three extratextual sources are especially
helpful in ascertaining Article 10(a)’s meaning: the Convention’s
drafting history, the views of the Executive, and the views of
other signatories.
Drafting history has often been used in treaty
interpretation. See
Medellín v.
Texas, 552 U. S.
491, 507 (2008) ;
Saks,
supra, at 400; see also
Schlunk,
supra, at 700 (analyzing the negotiating
history of the Hague Service Convention). Here, the Convention’s
drafting history strongly suggests that Article 10(a) allows
service through postal channels.
Philip W. Amram was the member of the United
States delegation who was most closely involved in the drafting of
the Convention. See S. Exec. Rep. No. 6, 90th Cong., 1st Sess. 5
(App.) (1967) (S. Exec. Rep.) (statement of State Department Deputy
Legal Adviser Richard D. Kearney). A few months before the
Convention was signed, he published an article describing and
summarizing it. In that article, he stated that “Article 10 permits
direct service by mail . . . unless [the receiving] state
objects to such service.” The Proposed International Convention on
the Service of Documents Abroad, 51 A. B. A. J. 650,
653 (1965).[
4]
Along similar lines, the Rapporteur’s report on
a draft version of Article 10—which did not materially differ from
the final version—stated that the “provision of paragraph 1 also
permits service . . . by telegram” and that the drafters
“did not accept the proposal that postal channels be limited to
registered mail.” 1 Ristau §4–3–5(a), at 149. In other words, it
was clearly understood that service by postal channels was
permissible, and the only question was whether it should be limited
to registered mail.
The Court also gives “great weight” to “the
Executive Branch’s interpretation of a treaty.”
Abbott v.
Abbott, 560 U. S. 1, 15 (2010) (internal quotation
marks omitted). In the half century since the Convention was
adopted, the Executive has consistently maintained that the Hague
Service Convention allows service by mail.
When President Johnson transmitted the
Convention to the Senate for its advice and consent, he included a
report by Secretary of State Dean Rusk. That report stated that
“Article 10 permits direct service by mail . . . unless
[the receiving] state objects to such service.” Convention on the
Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in Civil or
Commercial Matters: Message From the President of the United
States, S. Exec. Doc. C, 90th Cong., 1st Sess., 5 (1967).
In 1989, the Eighth Circuit issued
Bankston, the first Federal Court of Appeals decision
holding that the Hague Service Convention prohibits service by
mail. 889 F. 2d, at 174. The State Department expressed its
disagreement with
Bankston in a letter addressed to the
Administrative Office of the U. S. Courts and the National
Center for State Courts. See Notice of Other Documents (1), United
States Department of State Opinion Regarding the
Bankston
Case and Service by Mail to Japan Under the Hague Service
Convention, 30 I. L. M. 260, 260–261 (1991) (excerpts of
Mar. 14, 1990, letter). The letter stated that “
Bankston is
incorrect to the extent that it suggests that the Hague Convention
does not permit as a method of service of process the sending of a
copy of a summons and complaint by registered mail to a defendant
in a foreign country.”
Id., at 261. The State Department
takes the same position on its website.[
5]
Finally, this Court has given “considerable
weight” to the views of other parties to a treaty.
Abbott,
560 U. S., at 16 (internal quotation marks omitted); see
Lozano v.
Montoya Alvarez, 572 U. S. ___, ___
(2014) (slip op., at 9) (noting the importance of “read[ing] the
treaty in a manner consistent with the
shared expectations
of the contracting parties” (internal quotation marks omitted)).
And other signatories to the Convention have consistently adopted
Water Splash’s view.
Multiple foreign courts have held that the Hague
Service Convention allows for service by mail.[
6] In addition, several of the Convention’s
signatories have either objected, or declined to object, to service
by mail under Article 10, thereby acknowledging that Article 10
encompasses service by mail.[
7]
Finally, several Special Commissions—comprising numerous
contracting States—have expressly stated that the Convention does
not prohibit service by mail.[
8] By contrast, Menon identifies no evidence that any
signatory has ever rejected Water Splash’s view.
* * *
In short, the traditional tools of treaty
interpretation unmistakably demonstrate that Article 10(a)
encompasses service by mail. To be clear, this does not mean that
the Convention affirmatively
authorizes service by mail.
Article 10(a) simply provides that, as long as the receiving state
does not object, the Convention does not “interfere with
. . . the freedom” to serve documents through postal
channels. In other words, in cases governed by the Hague Service
Convention, service by mail is permissible if two conditions are
met: first, the receiving state has not objected to service by
mail; and second, service by mail is authorized under
otherwise-applicable law. See
Brockmeyer, 383 F. 3d, at
803–804.
Because the Court of Appeals concluded that the
Convention prohibited service by mail outright, it had no occasion
to consider whether Texas law authorizes the methods of service
used by Water Splash. We leave that question, and any other
remaining issues, to be considered on remand to the extent they are
properly preserved.
For these reasons, we vacate the judgment of the
Court of Appeals, and we remand the case for further proceedings
not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Justice Gorsuch took no part in the
consideration or decision of this case.
