The Daily Background

For a Human Rights class I’m taking, we’re supposed to formulate a question(s) related to human rights each week for class. The following is my third one. You can read my first and second here and here, respectively.

On some level does the concept of universal HR inherently violate the concept of sovereignty? Might sovereignty concerns be cited as an excuse not to obey or be a signatory to international human rights law? Has the United States used the excuse of sovereignty to refuse to sign HR treaties and covenants?

Possible answer 1: Of course not! The United States would never do such a thing and besides, human rights and sovereignty “exist in harmony” in the United States, as American conservatives claim they do.

Possible answer 2: In the early 1950s, when the Congress was debating whether or not to ratify various HR law, the American Bar Association teamed up with Republican Senator John Bricker claiming that HR law would infringe on the sovereignty of the United States (the same excuse that the Soviet Union, South Africa later used). The Republican party supported Bricker’s efforts against human rights law almost unwaveringly.

Others carried the argument further, claiming that HR law would violate American sovereignty in a variety of other ways, such as promoting communism over American democracy in the country, mean the end of our colleges and even destroy the American way of life as conservative ABA Chair Frank Holman warned hysterically.

Although the ABA, Senator Bricker, and literally every Republican congressmen in office while the Bricker Amendment was under consideration were not successful at blocking the United States from signing and ratifying HR law on grounds of sovereignty, later HR conventions were signed by the executive branch but then not ratified by Congress for decades over sovereignty-like concerns about what effect HR law would have on American laws.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) was signed by President Jimmy Carter in 1972, but not ratified by Congress until 1992 (and only then with several reservations about how the ICCPR could not effect American sovereignty).

Filed under: Human Rights, Z-TDB Blog