# Bricker Amendment **Status: stub — expand.** Proposed constitutional amendment championed by Senator John W. Bricker (R-OH) from 1951 through the mid-1950s, aimed at cutting the treaty power down after [[Missouri v. Holland]]. Its core provisions would have made any treaty provision conflicting with the Constitution void, required an act of Congress before a treaty could take domestic effect, and — in the "which clause" that alarmed the Eisenhower administration most — subjected treaties to state legislative approval on matters within state jurisdiction. Parallel language reached executive agreements, which had never been regulated at all. The immediate motives were a mix of postwar sovereigntist anxiety about the [[United Nations]] and the pending human-rights covenants, and Southern fear that international human-rights instruments could be used against segregation. Eisenhower opposed it as a crippling of the presidency; the George substitute failed **60–31 on February 26, 1954**, one vote short of the two-thirds needed. The amendment failed and the position won anyway. The Senate's now-routine **non-self-executing declaration**, the collapse of Article II treaty-making in favor of congressional-executive and sole executive agreements, and the American habit of signing human-rights treaties with reservations that neutralize them domestically all deliver in practice what Bricker could not get in text. ## See also - [[How a Treaty Is Made and Ratified]] - [[Missouri v. Holland]] - [[Executive Agreement]] - [[United Nations]]