(4 of 5)
Dangers of the Amendment. Alarmed at the prospect of reform-by-treaty, or revolution-by-treaty, a Seattle lawyer named Frank E. Holman, then president of the American Bar Association, set out five years ago on a crusade to save the Constitution by amending its treaty-power provisions. Among the allies he enlisted was Senator Bricker, who introduced his now-famed resolution in September 1951, and reintroduced it in the first days of the 83rd Congress.
In its current form, after two major rewritings, the Bricker Amendment says: 1) "A provision of a treaty which conflicts with this Constitution shall not be of any force or effect." 2) "A treaty shall become effective as internal law in the United States only through legislation which would be valid in the absence of treaty."
3) "Congress shall have power to regulate all executive agreements ... All such agreements shall be subject to the limitations imposed on treaties ..."
If adopted by two-thirds of the Senate and of the House and three-fourths of the state legislatures, the Bricker Resolution would become the 23rd Amendment. By applying the tight restrictions of Section 2 to all treaties indiscriminately, the amendment would undo what the Constitution's framers so carefully wrote. By requiring legislation before any treaty provision would take effect as internal law,* it would seriously slow up the processing of many common types of treaties. The "which would be valid" clause, a return to the spirit of the Articles of Confederation, would make the Federal Government less than sovereign.
The first part of Section 3 of the Bricker Amendment would cut deep into the President's constitutional authority to conduct foreign relations. The executive branch now makes an average of 100 agreements a day in the NATO setup alone. If Congress started "regulating" that process, the U.S. would get no international business done.
Where the Issue Stands. When the Bricker Resolution popped up in the 83rd Congress, Dwight Eisenhower and his Cabinet took a hard look at it and decided to fight it. Secretary Dulles and other Eisenhower officials last April rode up to Capitol Hill to appear before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee. Crux of their arguments: this is no time to throw a monkey wrench into the country's foreign-relations machinery. There is no need for safeguards against such treaties as the Human Rights Covenant, said Dulles, because the Administration does "not intend to become a party to any such covenant"—or to other treaties outside the "proper field" of international relations.
Bricker was not softened, but he did try to get around some of the Administration's objections by rewriting his resolution. The Administration was still far from satisfied. Last week Eisenhower & Co. and Bricker & Co. were huddling in a search for words that would satisfy both sides. They were not likely to find a formula. The President is determined to fight any amendment that would seriously damage either the country's foreign-relations machinery or the balance between the executive and legislative powers.