The United States and Human Rights Treaties: Race Relations, the Cold War, and Constitutionalism

Abstract

The United States prides itself on being a champion of human rights and pressures other countries to improve their human rights practices, and yet appears less willing than other nations to embrace international human rights treaties. Many commentators attribute this phenomenon to the particular historical context that existed in the late 1940s and early 1950s when human rights treaties were first being developed. These commentators especially emphasize the race relations of the time, noting that some conservatives resisted the developing human rights regime because they saw it as an effort by the federal government to extend its authority to address racial segregation and discrimination in the South. As this essay explains, the guarded and qualified U.S. relationship with human rights treaties stems not only from a particular moment in history but also is a product of more enduring, and less obviously problematic, features of the U.S. constitutional system. 1. This essay considers the history of the U.S. relationship with international human rights treaties. This relationship is sometimes described as being paradoxical or even hypocritical, in that the United States prides itself on being a champion of human rights and pressures other countries to improve their human rights practices, and yet appears less willing than other nations to embrace international human rights treaties. The United States did not begin to ratify any of the major human rights treaties until the late 1980s, and it still has not ratified a number of them, including the