Unless I am mistaken, the treaty was never ratified. If so, the treaty was not in effect from a legal standpoint anyway, but was only a voluntary issue. So the president terminating it gives the Senate no standing.
Are these libs conceding that the President may make a treaty enforceable if they never ratified it???
Congress does so many things like this, leaving the ball up in the air, then tries to take credit: such as not declaring wars when they have an obligation to do so.
It seems scary, and in a real sense illogical, but when I see the term "supreme law of the land" I think, "Constitution." Clearly nobody intended, let us hope, that the president and the Senate alone could modify the First Amendment (for example) without so much as a by-your-leave from the States. But that's what pops into my head.
OTOH it would seem that if a treaty is in fact a "law" it would be backed by Congress as well as the president. Yet the House has no role in treaty making, and the president is alone responsible for foreign policy unless a treaty is to be ratified. But what is a treaty with the US, if a new president can on his word alone abrogate it six months after the signing/ratification? Some "supreme law"!!
This whole issue is quite similar to the war powers issue: it's gotten to the point where presidents who feel like fighting--or, say, bombarding asperin factories--just do it. The role of the Congress is much attenuated. But if the Congress did ever declare war, what role would it have in terminating that emergency state?
Worst of all, of course, is the nonsequeteur known as the 17th Amendment, which converted the Senate from representatives of the States to representatives of the people of the states. The whole rationale of the Senate was, after all, to represent the State governments; now it's just a funny way of districting a second house of the legislature. And, since no State may be deprived of its equal representation in the Senate without its consent, it really required unanimous consent of the states to properly ratify that amendment.
Which gets me onto one of my hobby horses, the fact that the Senate would do its job better if it conducted its business electronically from the respective State capitols . . . and then you wouldn't need seperate elections for Senators; each State could be represented by its own Governor.
Then if a president were impeached he would be judged by a jury of his peers--and if a judge were nominated or impeached, that judge's respect for the States' prerogatives would be taken into consideration much as it was before the states allowed the 17th Amendment to be implemented.
There really should be some change in the Constitution (or at the very least a landmark Supreme Court precedent) to reflect the lessons we should have learned from the machinations of x42 . . .
Have you looked at Goldwater v. Carter? President Carter unilaterally ended the 1955 Mutual Defense with Taiwan. Senator Goldwater and other members of Congress filed suit claiming that Carter's decision was unconstitutional because he hadn't gotten the consent of 2/3 of the Senate. The Supreme Court dismissed the case on various grounds, some justices saying that the case wasn't ripe for review, other justices saying that it was a political question not a legal question for the Court to decide. Bottom line, if this matter makes it to the Court, it would be a case of first impression, meaning something that the Court hasn't ruled on before.
I didn't read it.
But since it's an act of legislation, and the Constitution assigns the legislative power to Congress alone, Congress must be considered the fundamental author of any treaty. You can think of the President and 2/3 of the Senate as a "special Congress" for treaty-making purposes, one that is delegated the authority, in these particular circumstances only, to speak for the whole Congress.