This is strange; for in both cases the treaty is brought to an end by our special intervention, and this is done without the concurrence of the other contracting party.
Charles Sumner
The Public Record
Charles Sumner was an American lawyer and statesman who represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1851 until his death in 1874. Before and during the American Civil War, he was a leading American advocate for the abolition of slavery, and after the war he was a key figure in the Reconstruction era, during which he and other Radical Republicans successfully fought to end slavery and ensure basic rights for Black Americans. He continued advocating for racial equality until his death, lobbying in his final days for a civil rights bill that served as a model for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Historians credit Sumner with coining the phrase "equality before the law," which he first used as part of an early attempt to integrate Boston's public school system.
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This admission is important, and, as it seems to me, conclusive.
And I come back again to the admission of both Senators, that a treaty can be abrogated only by Act of Congress.
On the contrary, I think that Senators on the other side--both the Senator from Virginia and the Senator from Connecticut--admit that a treaty cannot be abrogated, except by virtue of an Act of Congress.
To attribute to them any such power is to go beyond the Constitution.
The President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, may make treaties; but there is nothing in our Constitution conferring upon them the power to abrogate treaties.
We must look for our rule of conduct to our own Constitution.
The treaty with Denmark is at this moment part of the supreme law of the land, and can be abrogated only by Act of Congress.
To do even a great right, it is not safe to do even a little wrong.
Whatever may be the merits of the existing controversy with Denmark, I trust that the President will not clutch so eagerly at the promised fruits as to disregard the requirement of the Constitution, and the voice of the popular branch, in…
Only lately it authorized the origination of the great appropriation bills, constituting the mainspring of the Government, in defiance of uninterrupted usage, and, as I submit, the spirit of the Constitution.
Louis the Fourteenth, in the pride of conscious power, exclaimed, “I am the State”; and permit me to say, that our own Executive, undertaking to act in this matter without the sanction of Congress, effectively makes the same declaration.
And this assumption becomes more objectionable, when it is considered how completely it excludes the House of Representatives from an important function in the Government.
Not content with the treaty-making power which it possesses under the Constitution, it assumes the treaty-abrogating power, which it does not possess.
Surely there cannot be one rule for large nations and another for small nations; nor will any one argue that a treaty with France or Great Britain can be abrogated only by Act of Congress, but a treaty with Denmark may be abrogated by the…
Such, Sir, is the rule of the Constitution, sustained by authoritative precedents, in the abrogation of successive treaties with two powerful nations, France and Great Britain.
This very Act of Congress originated in the Senate, which at that day undertook to exercise no such power as is now claimed.
Never before has the President assumed to act without the House of Representatives in the performance of this duty.
It is a part of the Law of Nations, that, if a treaty be violated by one party, it is at the option of the other party, if innocent, to declare, in consequence of the breach, that the treaty is void.
Justice Iredell, of North Carolina, passed directly upon the power of Congress, asserting that to this body alone was given the power to abrogate a treaty under our Constitution.
Our Constitution declares a treaty to be the law of the land.
A treaty is in its nature a contract between two nations, not a legislative act.… In the United States a different principle is established.
It is therefore indispensable that they should have the obligation and force of a law, that they may be executed by the judicial power, and be obeyed like other laws.
In conformity with this requirement, the power to declare war, involving, of course, the abrogation of treaties, is expressly lodged with Congress.
Not the President alone, not the President and Senate, can set them aside; but for this purpose the whole power of the Government must be invoked, in its most solemn form, by Act of Congress.
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