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Now, I have tried there, and I think, if I may say so, in an objective sense I have summarized all the arguments of the opposition, all that have ever been made.

Now I will deal with No. 5 first, that a constitutional amendment. would handicap the conduct of our foreign relations:

The City Bar of New York, as well as the distinguished witnesses of the departments of Government generally take the position that a constitutional amendment will interfere with the conduct of our foreign relations, with the making of appropriate commercial treaties, with the proper buildup of our defense arrangements with the rest of the free world, and with the international control of such important matters as atomic energy.

There you have the whole story versus the general proposition they say the constitutional amendment will handicap the conduct of foreign relations, and I am giving you a fill of specifications of what they say.

Some of these witnesses go so far as to dramatize this matter by such statements as, "the proposed constitutional amendment will curtail the President's authority as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces."

Well, sir, as Dr. Finch told you, as any lawyer who has looked into this will tell you, there is nothing whatever in the amendment about the Commander in Chief.

Now, as an illustration they suppose that an enemy is invading Alaska and a Canadian motorized division is being rushed to the aid of our west coast from eastern Canada. They make the utterly fantastic contention that such an armed force in this country by our invitation—just like if we invite a ship of war from another country, as Marshall spoke of in the case Dr. Finch mentioned-in this country by our invitation to help protect us, would be subjected to various State laws as to carrying firearms, exceeding road speed limits, and so forth. The illustration is so fantastic, sir, as to require no answer, but in passing it may be pointed out that a constitutional amendment in the simple form proposed by the American Bar Association would in no sense affect the President's powers as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces and that any Canadian division in this country by our invitation would be immune from the annoyances of these purely local resolutions to which they refer.

They took that illustration from the original report of the city bar. That was not developed out of the minds of these Government witnesses. That is the illustration they took out of the city bar. Those who have carefully considered the provisions of the Federal Constitution and the court decisions with respect to the broad and exclusive powers of the Federal Government in matters of defense, which Dr. Finch says will not interfere with the Kellogg-Briand Pact or the NATO or anything of that kind, matters of international armament, whether atomic energy or otherwise, in matters of interstate and foreign commerce, over which the Congress has full power, and all other matters of international import, are satisfied that these arguments which were all made in the hearings last year by the city bar merely adopted and expanded by Government witnesses are sheer bogeyism and are still bogeyism by whatever persons made.

Now, the fourth contention of the opponents is-I am taking them up in their reverse order-if bad treaties are ratified, they can be nulli

fied by subsequent legislation. Doubtless treaties can be repudiated or modified by subsequent congressional legislation. We agree. But even so, such legislation is not an adequate remedy to protect us against the vast array of treaty law that is being spawned, for the following reasons, among others:

1. The particular Congress may be unable to pass such legislation in the face of the executive power which starts as being behind the treaty, unless it can muster that two-thirds vote in both Houses. So you could give this country away to a Hitler under an executive agreement or treaty and you could 1.ot take it back unless you could get a twothirds vote.

Now, they must face that proposition, these gentlemen, because this is their own argument. A treaty which has become the supreme law of the land by an action of the President and only two-thirds of the Senate cannot, even though determined harmful to our internal affairs by a large majority of Congress, be rendered inoperative unless a two-thirds vote can be secured in both Houses.

The second subhead under this, such subsequent legislation being a protection, such subsequent legislation by Congress may easily involve international complications. This is the exact situation which you gentlemen face now with respect to the proposed repudiation of the Yalta, Teheran, and Potsdam agreements, because they say to you many things have been done under this on the good faith that they would be carried out.

I may say that the New York bar first suggested reservations.

Third, a particular Congress might not elect to repeal a treaty even though it had some bad provisions, whereas, if the treaty were not self-executing as to domestic matters until implemented, the same Congress might very well refuse to implement it.

Now, the third argument which the opponents make, the main argument, is that even where bad treaties are drafted, American rights can be protected by understandings and reservations.

Now, we have gone into that pretty carefully. An "understanding," sir, is appended to a treaty for the purpose of making it clear that the document is being approved under certain conditions. A "reservation," sir, is a clause appended to a treaty which states that some portion of the treaty is not to be considered binding. Both the so-called understanding and reservation amount to nothing more than a counteroffer to the other signatory nations, and of course require acceptance, which in connection with the multipartite treaties of the present day is almost impossible.

Moreover, sir, to draft appropriate understandings and reservations at the immediate time of ratification requires a detailed study of each and every provision of the treaty and of the language of ratification by the Senate. We have already been told, sir, last year by Senator McCarran that you Senators are so busy often with your very important matters of committee assignments and so on that you do not have time to read the fine print in a treaty. It is like the fine print in an insurance policy, and I know many times lawyers have bought insurance and they did not know what it covered until years afterward when they had a loss. So the difficulty in this connection is that to put any intelligent understandings and reservations on a treaty at the time would require such careful reading and consideration of the treaty and the language of the reservation that the Senate would be

caught in the same position as it is now, with insufficient time to know what was in it.

And, sir, these understandings and reservations would be urawn. by the same personalities in the then State Department that negotiated the treaty and were anxious to have it separated. And you, sir, know, and I will apply it not to you because you are a more careful lawyer-in some issues, where I want to get acceptance of a contract, I will draw my reservation just as literally as I can to get a deal. That is what has been happening to these treaties. They have been drawing them as little protective of the United States as possible because the other nations say "We do not know anything about your Constitution and Bill of Rights, so we have to have it our way." But, sir, it would be no protection for the American people for the Senate to be tendered a treaty which they did not have time to adequately consider and then to be tendered reservations by the same. people who are anxious to put the treaty over.

Now, the second argument of the opponents is that bad treaties will be prevented by Senate vigilance. Last year, sir, when you were not present, I approached that with great delicacy because I am just a lawyer out West, and I did not want the Senators to feel that anybody in the American Bar had any lack of confidence in them. Senator McCarran stopped me and he said:

You do not need to worry about that, we Senators want a constitutional amendment to protect us so that if we do happen to ratify something that is wrong and is against the Constitution, it will be sifted out when it comes into the courts.

The answer to this contention generally is that unfortunate treaties will be prevented by Senate vigilance.

Fifty-eight Senators last year, in principle at least, and more than 60 Senators this year themselves proposed a constitutional amendment to protect American rights and the American form of government. I want to make it clear because it was not last year and there was some wrong publicity on it, nobody in the American Bar Association came down and asked Senator Bricker to introduce his resolution. Is that not right, Senator?

Senator BRICKER. That is right.

Mr. HOLMAN. We did not come down here to do any lobbying or anything of the sort. We had not yet ourselves, after several years of study, come to the proposition of the need for this. Senator Bricker introduced his Resolution 130 before the American Bar acted, and none of us had any power to come here for the American Bar. There was some newspaper publicity last year that we had come down here and influenced Senator Bricker. He introduced his resolution on his own account, and before the American Bar took any action. Is that not correct?

Senator BRICKER. That is correct.

Mr. HOLMAN. And this year the resolution was introduced on January 7 and the American Bar Association did not meet until February. We always met in February to consider this matter of executive agreements. We did not come to rest in our minds on executive agreements, sir, until San Francisco in September. So I want to put at rest this story that the American Bar came down here and in any sense lobbied because Senator Wiley did me the compliment by saying, “Well, Frank, you did not come here beforehand, you are here

now, you are not a lobbyist, you are a consultant." I do not know what the difference is, but I want to make it clear that the American Bar did no lobbying to have any of these, either Senate Joint Resolution 130 or Senate Joint Resolution 1, introduced.

Senator BRICKER. That is right, and only recently did I know the amendment of the committee of the bar was introduced because the American Bar Association had not taken their action. I had read all the articles in the American Bar Journal, the first speech Mr. Holman made, and I saw all these treaties coming before the Senate. I saw the dangers of them and I felt that it ought to be introduced, after I could get no hearing on the resolution which was introduced asking that it be the sense of the Senate that we not ratify the Human Rights Covenant that the United States committee was working on it along with the other nations of the world. That was the impetus to the first resolution that was introduced.

Senator WATKINS. May I make an observation? The second argument of the opponents says bad treaties will be prevented by Senate vigilance. I am not casting any reflections on the North Atlantic Pact, although I voted against it, but I want to say this, that after the fact was duly approved by the Congress, the President started the implementation by asking for money for armaments and cash to put over that part of the program. The President then went on and announced he was going to send 10 divisions of troops to Europe, not consulting the Congress, and again that so-called historic debate on the troops-to-Europe resolution.

During the course of that a number of the Senators announced that if they had not believed the assurances given them that Congress would implement every part of the treaty, they never would have voted for it. The assurances they had were locked up in the records or the memories of the members of the Foreign Relations Committee and later on it came out that the assurances had been given that constitutional processes as used in article 11 meant that Congress must implement every section, every part of that treaty.

I doubt that the treaty would have been approved if we had had the truth in the beginning that they did not intend to follow that. So it is an easy matter, where you have so many people involved in a busy session, to have a treaty of that kind approved, vital as that was to our future, have it approved without the Senators really knowing what is being done or relying on the assurances of someone else, not even in writing.

The CHAIRMAN. I would not concede that is true, Senator Watkins. I think the Senate knows when they ratify a treaty what is in it pretty well.

Senator WATKINS. I am pointing out a fact that is in the record of speeches which were made by the Senators themselves, had they known they were not going to comply with it, and assurance had been made, they never would have voted for it. That is a matter of record. Mr. HOLMAN. Now, you have to get away at 11.

I want on that other point to clear the record for all time. No member of the American Bar came down here and importuned anybody to introduce this resolution and no member of the American Bar came down here, at least I have not, sir, unless invited.

Now, on page 6. The first contention of the opponents is that there is no need for a constitutional amendment because they say as yet we

have had no bad treaties. Of course the answer to this is that the United Nations Charter is a very dangerous treaty. I do not like to use the word "bad"-I prefer the word "dangerous," dangerous to American rights-under which a particular Congress now, sir, may legislate as to all manner of social economic and property matters which in the absence of a treaty the Congress would have no right under the Constitution to deal with.

The Warsaw Convention, sir, is a bad treaty. If I can get on an airplane-and I represent the United Air Lines and should be for that convention-if I get on a plane in Seattle with a ticket to Vancouver, British Columbia, and you, sir, on that plane have a ticket to Bellingham, Wash., we are on the same plane, it goes down at an intermediate town, Mount Vernon, you are entitled full jury trial, to have the jury fix the amount of damages, but my widow has to take the equivalent of 125,000 francs, which at the time of the Bell case was $8,172. My widow might think I might be worth a little more than that and the jury might think so, too.

So I say that is a bad treaty. That was one of the treaties, sir, where it was in the fine print and not easily ascertainable.

The real danger, of course, lies in the vast array of treaties that are being prepared for submission, this vast array that is already, 200 in the United Nations according to their own figures. I wrote the United Nations Publicity Bureau to which I could subscribe and asked for a list of treaties. I thought I would get a list of 40 or 50. I got a set of books that long, pretty nearly as much as the United States statutes.

Now, sir, our forefathers did not wait until they had suffered infringements of their basic rights. They insisted on the adoption of the first 10 amendments forthwith before any infringements of their rights so that it would be stated too clearly for any Government official or for any court to misunderstand that in the matters covered · by the first 10 amendments the Federal Government was prohibited from acting. There is much more real threat and danger today than there was then to justify an appropriate and adequate amendment of the Constitution to protect the American form of government, or as Mr. George Finch put it, a bill of rights against unbridled treaty and executive agreement power.

Now, the position, sir, of the sponsors of this amendment may be summarized as follows:

The proposed amendment embodies the following ideas, and any court, sir, looking at this matter later on, will be governed by what comes out in your reports as to what you intend, they can look at your intention-the treaty amendment embodies these ideas and if it does not do so, sir, we hope your committee will alter the text:

1. A provision of or a treaty which conflicts with the Constitution of the United States is void. A provision, not the whole treaty. You take the Warsaw Convention, it is still a good international agreement, it fixes certain airways, and so on. This amendment would merely screen out the items in a treaty which affects the domestic rights.

Next, sir, is the form of government of the United States protect the form of government of the United States as created in the Constitution.

Third, a treaty shall not be effective as internal law in the United States-it is always effective under this amendment as international

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