G. Edward Griffin - The Fearful Master - PDF Archive

Nevertheless, the drive to repeal the Connally Amendment has been carried forward
relentlessly by United Nations devotees under the appealing and attractive banner of
"World Peace Through World Law." Not only has the Communist party pushed hard for
repeal, but, unfortunately, so have Eisenhower, Nixon, Kennedy, Stevenson, Rusk and
Johnson.
Accepting compulsory jurisdiction of the United Nations World Court is just one of the
threads that is rapidly binding Uncle Sam into complete helplessness. It is, however, one
of the most important because many of the others could be untied, in time, without it.
Should this one be secured, though, poor Gulliver will not have a chance.
The silken thread to which we have been referring actually takes the form of international
treaties. As John Foster Dulles, secretary of state, said in 1952:
The treaty-making power is an extraordinary power liable to abuse.
Treaties make international law and also they make domestic law.
Under our Constitution, treaties become the supreme law of the land.
They are indeed more supreme than ordinary laws, for congressional
laws are invalid if they do not conform to the Constitution, whereas
treaty laws can override the Constitution. Treaties, for example, can
take powers away from the Congress and give them to the Federal
Government or to some international body and they can cut across the
rights given the people by the Constitutional Bill of Rights. 7
This may come as a shock to those who have harbored the idea that they are protected as
American citizens by the Bill of Rights. But, as a result of a series of Supreme Court
decisions, it is now entirely possible for us to enter into a treaty with a foreign Government
or the United Nations which would, as Mr. Dulles said, "cut across the rights given the
people by the Constitutional Bill of Rights." If the UN Covenant on Human Rights, for
instance, should ever receive the support of two thirds of our senators--whether they
realized what they were doing or not--our whole Bill of Rights would be automatically and
immediately repealed. It is that simple.
Of course, our Founding Fathers, who drafted our Constitutional system, never intended
for it to be this way. In 1801 Thomas Jefferson wrote:
By the general power to make treaties, the Constitution must have
intended to comprehend only those objects which are usually regulated
by treaties, and cannot be otherwise regulated. It must have meant to
except out all those rights reserved to the states; for surely the
President and the Senate cannot do by treaty what the whole
government is interdicted from doing in any way. 8
This is the view that prevailed for many years in America. In 1836, in its decision in the
case of New Orleans v. U.S., the Supreme Court pointed out:
The government of the United States . . . is one of limited powers. It can
exercise authority over no subjects except those that have been
delegated to it. Congress cannot, by legislation, enlarge the federal
jurisdiction, nor can it be enlarged under the treaty-making powers. 9