Holland be enjoined from implementing the Act, arguing that it was "an unconstitutional interference with the rights reserved to the States by the Tenth Amendment, and [...] the acts of the defendant [...] invade the sovereign right of the State and contravene its will manifested in statutes." Additionally, Missouri claimed that states had an "absolute" right to regulate game within their borders as recognized by "ancient law, feudal law, and the common law in England" as an "attribute of government and a necessary incident of sovereignty." The state also warned that permitting the federal government to regulate birds could set a dangerous precedent for government to broaden its power over other domains for which it had no enumerated constitutional power. Judgment In an opinion authored by Justice Holmes, the Supreme Court dismissed Missouri's demand for an injunction against the federal government, holding that protection of a state's quasi-sovereign right to regulate game is insufficient jurisdictional basis to enjoin enforcement of the laws at issue. The Supreme Court ruled the Migratory Bird Treaty Act constitutional, relying primarily on article VI, clause 2, sometimes known as the "Supremacy Clause", which establishes that treaties are the "supreme law of the land" and supersede state law accordingly. The ruling implied that treaty provisions were not subject to questioning by the states under the process of judicial review. In the course of his judgment, Justice Holmes remarked on the nature of the Constitution as an "organism" that must be interpreted in contemporaneous terms: With regard to that we may add that when we are dealing with words that also are a constituent act, like the Constitution of the United States, we must realize that they have called into life a being the development of which could not have been foreseen completely by the most gifted of its begetters. It was enough for them to realize or to hope that they had created an organism; it has taken a century and has cost their successors much sweat and blood to prove that they created a nation. The case before us must be considered in the light of our whole experience and not merely in that of what was said a hundred years ago. The treaty in question does not contravene any prohibitory words to be found in the Constitution. The only question is whether it is forbidden by some invisible radiation from the general terms of