[extropy-chat] Treaties ratified by the US Senate--Reason Mag

[Keith Henson]

At 08:20 PM 24/06/05 -0700, you wrote:
>Brett Paatsch wrote:
> > Can you please show me, if you are able and I do think you are, and
> > perhaps this will help you show some of your developing skills with
> > marshalling a legal arguments concisely, how it is that you have
> > concluded that "treaties that ate ratified by the US Senate are US law."
>
>
>Treaties are not a legislative action and so they are not "law".  A treaty 
>is a contract between
>governments, and does not in and of itself bind private citizens to the 
>terms of that contract.
>
>As a practical matter the governments that sign treaties are often 
>compelled to pass laws
>that reflect the terms of the contract.  The Senate could ratify treaties 
>all day, but unless the
>House of Representatives agrees to pass laws that enforce the terms of the 
>treaty it is not
>binding on the private citizen, only on the government.
>
>I am not a lawyer either, but this much seems obvious.

Contracts between governments are something to be concerned about.  Back 
when the L5 Society was a major force in defeating the Moon Treaty my wife 
and I did a lot of research on this subject.  It was published as a 3 page 
article in *Reason,* Aug. 1982.  From that article:

         "The treaty provisions that concern us are: Article VIII of the
1967 Space Treaty, which reads, "A State . . . shall retain
jurisdiction and control over such object [spacecraft] and over any
personnel thereof"; Article IV of the Rescue Agreement, which enjoins
signers to return personnel, willing or not, to the launching
authority; and Article XII of the Moon Treaty (not signed by the US
government), which declares, "States . . . shall retain jurisdiction
and control over their personnel."

         "These space treaty provisions stand in stark contrast to a
truly landmark document, the United Nations Declaration of Human
Rights (1948).  In Article 14, Section 1, it states, "Everyone has the
right to seek and enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution."
Article 15, Section 2, declares, "No one shall be . . . denied the
right to change his nationality."

        "If someone were to ask for asylum in space or on the moon, the
president might ignore or rule inapplicable these fairly clear treaty
provisions--provided, of course, the president found out in time.
Obviously, this cannot be counted on.  It was more than a week before
the president found out about the Simas Kirdurka incident, and then
only through the newspapers.  The president is the only authority who
could decide some thing as drastic as suspending a treaty provision. "

http://groups.google.ca/group/sci.space.policy/msg/3654d08deee4f4f0?dmode=source&hl=en

How much water has gone under the bridge!  When we wrote that we could not 
have imagined that I would someday become a refugee.

Keith Henson

PS.  Several years later I wrote an article on memetics for 
"Reason.*   That article offended the editorial staff so intensely that the 
rancor against both the subject and me persisted for at least a decade.  A 
few years later--and with some trepidation--I submitted it to *Liberty* 
(after a personal request from a national level Libertarian candidate who 
had read and liked the article).   If anything the reaction against the 
article at *Liberty* was more intense.  The phone call from the editor 
sticks in my minds as vicious and highly emotional with no reason for the 
reaction being given at all.   To this day I don't understand why the 
article induced such a gut rejection in some Libertarians.

If anyone has insight or knowledge they could clear up a substantial 
mystery.  The article is here:

http://www.alamut.com/subj/evolution/misc/hensonMemes.html

There is a bit of a thread discussing these events here:

http://cfpm.org/~majordom/memetics/2000/9950.html