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The President's Control of Foreign Relations
The President's Control of Foreign Relations Author:Edward S. Corwin Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PART TWO: TOPICS AND PRECEDENTS CHAPTER II Diplomatic Intercourse, Its Incidents And Agents—Recognition 1—The President is the organ of diplomatic inter... more »course of the Government of the United States, first, because of his powers in connection with the reception and dispatch of diplomatic agents and with treaty making; secondly, because of the tradition of executive power adherent to his office. A dependable British authority points out that the making of treaties and all matters affecting the foreign relations of Great Britain fall to the royal prerogative, that until late years treaties were not brought before Parliament until after ratification, and that the initiation of the foreign policy of the Kingdom belongs to the executive exclusively.1 The view which was held of executive power at the time of the adoption of the Constitution is also to be found exemplified in the early State Constitutions. On this point President Goodnow remarks as follows: The American conception of the executive power prevailing at the time of the adoption of the United States Constitution corresponded with that part of the executive 1 Todd, Parliamentary Government, I, pp. 307-9. power which has been called political. The great exception to this statement is to be found in the fact that the carrying on of the foreign relations was not included within the powers of the state governor. This exception does not, however, prove that the diplomatic power was not considered a part of the executive power. The omission of the diplomatic power from among the powers of the governor was due entirely to the peculiar position of the colonies and later of the states. The care of the foreign relations was not in the governor's hands, simply because during the colonial period the mother country...« less