American Treaty Provisions Relating to Consular Privileges and Immunities

Abstract

Apparently no consistent effort has been made to secure a uniform schedule of consular privileges and immunities applicable to all of the states with which the United States has entered into treaty relations. In the entire history of the United States up to the present time there have been only sixteen consular conventions. Some 109 other treaties, however, have secured consular exemptions in varying degrees from many different nations; and the popular most-favored-nation clause has extended the schedule still further. One of the first treaties the United States entered into was a consular convention, that of 1788 with France, but the second consular convention did not come until over sixty years later. During the interval many provisions in commercial treaties had extended exemptions in various countries, so that by 1853 every one of the privileges which are in effect today had been inserted in at least one treaty, and some of them had been repeated many times.