Congress and Human Rights in U. S. Foreign Policy: The Fate of General Legislation

Abstract

Students of human rights and U.S. foreign policy know well that between 1973 and the end of the first Reagan administration the U.S. Congress placed a raft of human rights laws on the books. The present author categorizes the legislation as hortatory, general, country-specific, and function-specific. The focus here is on the general legislation. The hortatory acts have faded into political oblivion, whether they be parts of laws or nonbinding portions of congressional resolutions. That is precisely why they are labeled hortatory. By contrast, the country-specific and function-specific laws have received great attention, so much so that their fate requires separate analysis.' This article argues the following about general legislation: Congress as a whole cannot usually give effective oversight to this legislation because the votes are not there to force the executive to follow the letter-or indeed sometimes even the spirit-of the laws adopted. When the executive disagrees with Congress on human rights it is only rarely that the Congress become sufficiently concerned about the fate of general legislation to compel the executive to implement the law. The actions of the first Reagan administration show especially clearly the executive's systematic disregard for congressional intent in much general human rights legislation, as well as Congress's inability to alter executive policy on general matters. Absent specific legislation, U.S. foreign policy would still be characterized by the Imperial Presidency.