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

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.