WRIGHT— POWER TO MAKE AGREEMENTS. 341 



explained, however, that the United States is under no similar obli- 

 gation to ratify negotiated treaties, because the other party is pre- 

 sumed to understand the lack of identity between the negotiating 

 and ratifying authorities under our Constitution, even when the 

 right of reservation has not, as it has in most cases, been expressly 

 reserved in the full powers of the negotiators.®^ 



The Senate's right to qualify its consent to ratification by reser- 

 vations, amendments and interpretations was established through a 

 reservation to the Jay treaty of 1794,®" has been exercised in about 

 seventy cases,®^ and has been judicially recognized.®* 



" In this country a treaty is something more than a contract, for the 

 Federal Constitution declares it to be the law of the land. If so, before 

 it can become a law, the Senate, in whom rests the authority to ratify or 

 approve it, must agree to it. But the Senate are not required to adopt 

 or reject it as a whole, but may modify or amend it." 



A refusal of the Senate either to reject or consent to ratification is 



of questionable propriety. Senator Sumner of Massachusetts, as 



Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, succeeded in 



keeping the treaty for cession of the Virgin Islands by Denmark, 



submitted to it on December 3, 1867, pigeon-holed for over two 



years, when it was finally rejected.®^ 



The Senate may suggest interpretations or pass resolutions not 



qualifying its consent to a treaty, as it did in the case of the Treaty 



of Paris ending the Spanish war. A majority of the Senate passed 



a resolution favoring the ultimate independence of the Philippines 



but the court held that such resolutions ' are legally of no effect. 



" The meaning of the treaty," said the Supreme Court, " cannot be 



^''^ Supra, sec. 26; Moore, Digest, 5: 200; Crandall, op. cit., p. 94. 



82 Hayden, op. cit., p. 75. 



83 Senator Lodge, loc. cit., supra, note 67 ; Crandall, op. cit., pp. 79-81 ; 

 Treaty Reservations bj' Foreign Powers and the United States, Sen. Doc. 72, 

 67th Cong., 1st Sess., 1921 ; David Hunter Miller, Reservations to Treaties, N. 

 Y., 1919; Q. Wrightt, Amendments and Reservations to the Treaty, Minn. 

 L. R.. 4: 14. 



8* Haver v. Yaker, 9 Wall. ^2. See also Brown, J., in Fourteen Diamond 

 Rings ?'. U. S., 176 (1901) ; Willoughby, op. cit., p. 462. 



85 Moore, Digest, i : 610. The French guarantee treaty, signed at the 

 same time as the treaty of Versailles, appears to have been reposing in the 

 archives of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee since its submission to the 

 Senate by President Wilson in 1919. 



