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President Bush's strange-bedfellows complicity with a World Court ruling involving a Texas murder case earned a rebuke this week from the U.S. Supreme Court. If continued disdain for the U.S. death penalty by international elites is the ruling's most visible byproduct, most Americans probably can live with it.

The case involved a 1993 sexual assault/murder in which Ernesto Medellin, a Mexican national, was convicted and sentenced to death. Medellin was read his Miranda rights when arrested, but wasn't told he had the right to talk with his country's consulate, guaranteed in an international treaty known as the Vienna Convention.

Mexico, which doesn't have a death penalty, challenged the U.S. proceedings, and in 2004 the International Court of Justice ruled the death sentences of Medellin and about 50 other Mexican nationals should be reviewed.

The Bush administration opposed Mexico initially, then in 2005 reversed itself. The president ordered Texas and other affected states to reopen their cases so the United States could "discharge its international obligations.” Texas said no, and the case eventually reached the Supreme Court.

By 6-3, justices said judgments of international courts aren't binding on U.S. courts, and that Bush can't change that by ordering compliance. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said the Vienna Convention doesn't give the president the power to "unilaterally make treaty obligations binding on domestic courts.”

The sum of the matter is that Medellin, now 33, soon will face an execution date. That means Bush's good-will intentions aside, the U.S. probably is in for more scorn abroad for its death penalty stance.

So be it. The United States remains a nation of laws, and the president's power to act is governed by our Constitution and U.S. courts, not international treaties.