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The Rôle of the Senate in Treaty-Making: A Survey of Four Decades

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Denna Frank Fleming
Denna Frank Fleming
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University
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Extract

The action of the United States Senate upon the large majority of treaties laid before it has been comparatively perfunctory and without important result. Four-fifths of all the treaties submitted to the Senate have been approved by it without any change whatever. Twenty-one per cent have been altered in the Senate, for the most part by changes of words or clauses that later passed the scrutiny of both the President and the foreign powers concerned. Of the 152 treaties amended by the Senate, only one-fifth have been changed so seriously as to compromise or destroy the international agreement proposed. Likewise, the failure of 62 treaties to be approved by the Senate in any form has had serious consequences in not more than a fifth of the situations resulting.

Moreover, while all kinds of treaties have incurred the Senate's displeasure, it has consistently emasculated only one type, i.e., those for the pacific settlement of disputes. It is upon the Senate's action on this class of treaties that opinion as to the usefulness of its rôle in treaty-making must divide. To those who believe that a policy of national isolation can and should be maintained, the record of the Senate is not disturbing; it is highly praiseworthy.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , August 1934 , pp. 583 - 598
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1934

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References

1 For the figures used, see Dangerfield, R., In Defense of the Senate (Oklahoma Press, 1933), pp. 151, 252Google Scholar.

2 Final action was not taken until May 5, 1897, after the McKinley administration had added its endorsement to the treaty.

3 The attitude of the senators from eight Southern states toward arbitration treaties has been determined largely by the possibility that the repudiation of bonds by their states, issued principally during the “carpet-bag” period and largely held abroad, might be called into question. Cf. Howland, C. P., “Our Repudiated State Debts,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 6, pp. 395–407 (Apr., 1928)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Pp. 147–148. See also the testimony of Harvey, George in Henry Clay Frick, the Man (N. Y., 1928), p. 325Google Scholar.

5 Gray, George W., “Unceasingly War Forges Deadlier Arms,” New York Times Magazine, December 10, 1933, pp. 6–7Google Scholar.

6 Chase, Eugene P., “Parliamentary Control of Foreign Policy in Great Britain,” in this Review, Vol. 25, pp. 861–880 (Nov., 1931)Google Scholar; A. Gordon Dewey, “Parliamentary Control of External Relations in the British Dominions,” ibid., Vol. 25, pp. 285–310 (May, 1931).

7 Zurcher, A. J., The Experiment with Democracy in Central Europe (N. Y., 1933), pp. 206–217Google Scholar.

8 “Coöperation Abroad through Organization at Home,” Annals of Amer. Acad., Vol. 156, pp. 136–137 (July, 1931)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Since this paper was written, the Senate has made a very significant concession to the necessities of international agreement. It permitted to become effective, on June 12, 1934, a law giving the President the power to conclude reciprocity tariff treaties, raising or lowering existing duties as much as 50 per cent, and to put them into force without reference to the Senate. Temporarily at least, during a specified period of three years, the Senate has abdicated its right to approve an important class of treaties. If the Administration was to have any real power to attempt a revival of our international trade, such a surprising surrender of authority was indeed imperative. It was vital equally to negotiating with executives having still broader powers over tariffs and to putting the agreements made into force. Throughout our history, but one third of the reciprocity treaties sent to the Senate had been approved by it. No other group of treaties had a higher mortality rate. No other kind of treaty so quickly alarms local interests and makes them vocal in the Senate. The possibility of getting a large number of tariff-bargaining treaties through the Senate was therefore almost non-existent. If such treaties are to be of value, they must make many concessions in rates, concessions that would produce endless obstruction and log-rolling in the Senate. The Senate has recognized frankly that if the tariff was to be revised in the national interest, the Executive would have to do it.

10 Fleming, D. F., The United States and the League of Nations, 1918–1920 (New York, 1932), pp. 506–507Google Scholar.

11 The newest examination of the results of the treaty-making clause of the Constitution is contained in Holt, W. Stull, Treaties Defeated by the Senate (Baltimore, 1933)Google Scholar. In the concluding paragraph of his study, Mr. Holt characterizes the existing system as one which “produces impotence and friction,” and warns that “a deadlock between the President and the Senate over a treaty involving a really critical foreign problem may end in ruin” (p. 307).

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