The Role of the United States Senate Concerning Self-Executing and Non-Self-Executing Treaties

This essay concerns a pattern in treaty actions of the U.S. Senate which tends to weaken the domestic legal effect of treaties. Under this pattern, the Senate qualifies its consent to U.S. ratification of the treaty with a declaration or other condition to the effect that the treaty shall be non-self-executing, or otherwise expresses its intention that the treaty shall not be used as a direct source of law in U.S. courts. Such qualifications, referred to hereinafter as non-self-executing declarations, give rise to important questions about the place of the affected treaties within the fabric of U.S. law, especially in light of Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, which provides that treaties of the United States shall be the supreme Law of the Land