Congress, the Foreign Service, and the Department of State

1930 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 355-366
Author(s):  
Irvin Stewart
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Executive Committee ◽  
The United States ◽  
Executive Order ◽  
Service Personnel ◽  
Department Of State ◽  
Foreign Service ◽  
Secretary Of State

On July 1, 1924, there became effective an act for the reorganization and improvement of the Foreign Service of the United States, popularly known as the Rogers Act, which had been approved on May 24. That act combined the hitherto separate diplomatic and consular services into a single Foreign Service. Admission to the Foreign Service was for the most part to be upon competitive examination, and promotion was to be based upon merit. The act left to the executive the establishment of the system for ascertaining merit.Pursuant to the Rogers Act, an executive order of June 7, 1924, created a Foreign Service Personnel Board. The composition of the board was slightly changed by an executive order of February 25, 1928, under the terms of which the board was to be composed of three assistant secretaries of state to be designated by the Secretary of State, and three Foreign Service officers. The three Foreign Service officers, representing both the diplomatic and consular branches, were to constitute the executive committee of the board.Among other things, the Foreign Service Personnel Board was charged with the duty of submitting to the Secretary, when vacancies should arise in the Foreign Service, lists of officers whose records of efficiency entitled them to advancement in the service and who were therefore recommended for promotion. A departmental order directed the executive committee to take possession of all records relating to the personnel of the diplomatic and consular services and to keep the efficiency records of all Foreign Service officers.

The History of the Department of State: VII

1911 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 414-432
Author(s):  
Gaillard Hunt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Legal Provision ◽  
Department Of State ◽  
Secretary Of State ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government

Having considered in former numbers of this Journal the sometime and occasional duties of the Department, including among them certain contingent duties which it has never been called upon to perform, we may now advance to a consideration of its habitual functions.The organic act of the Department prescribed that the Secretary of State should keep “ the seal of the United States.” It is the mark of the supreme authority of the United States, and before the government went into operation under the Constitution, was in the custody of the Secretary of Congress, being used to verify all important acts, whether executive or legislative; but the debate on executive departments in the first constitutional congress indicated that Congress did not contemplate keeping the seal any longer, and thought it would necessarily pass to the custody of the Executive. The President did, in fact, take it under his control as soon as he assumed office and before legal provision had been made for it.

Reorganization and Improvement of the Foreign Service

1924 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 774-777
Author(s):  
J. W. Garner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
The United States ◽  
Foreign Service ◽  
Secretary Of State ◽  
The Law ◽  
Deep Interest

By an act of Congress passed at the last session the United States has followed the example of a number of European states since the war and provided for the reorganization of its foreign service. The act was passed after long discussion and it embodies recommendations made by various recent Secretaries of State, including Mr. Bryan, Mr. Lansing, Mr. Colby,and Mr. Hughes; by Mr Wilbur J. Carr, formerly Director of the Consular Service and now an Assistant Secretary of State; by the Hon. John W.Davis, former ambassador to Great Britain, and other persons interested in the reform of the foreign service. The author of the act was the Hon.John J. Rogers of Massachusetts, to whose deep interest and untiring zeal the passage of the law was mainly due.

Revision of Nationality Laws of the United States

1940 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-46
Author(s):  
Richard W. Flournoy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Attorney General ◽  
The United States ◽  
Executive Order ◽  
Secretary Of State

It is to be hoped that one of the first measures to which Congress will give its attention during the next session will be the bill (H. R. 6127) “To revise and codify the nationality laws of the United States into a comprehensive nationality code.” This bill was introduced by the Honorable Samuel Dickstein, Chairman of the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization of the House of Representatives, May 3,1939. It embodies a draft nationality code, which was prepared under the direction of a committee composed of the Secretary of State, the Attorney General and the Secretary of Labor, in pursuance of an Executive Order of April 25, 1933. The cabinet committee submitted its report June 1, 1938, upon the basis of extensive studies and conferences by officials of the three Departments, and the report was submitted to Congress with a message of the President dated June 13, 1938.

Contemporary Practice of the United States Relating to International Law

1961 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 697-733 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denys P. Myers
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Cooperation ◽  
Committee Report ◽  
Department Of State ◽  
Secretary Of State ◽  
Legal Adviser ◽  
Contemporary Practice

The Senate on March 16, 1961, by a vote of 72 to 18, advised and consented to the ratification of the Convention on the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and its three protocols signed at Paris December 14, 1960. The Organization is a consultative forum capable of initiating agreements on the use and development of economic resources, on removing obstacles to trade and current payments, on liberalization of capital movements, on the flow of capital to less developed countries. The 20 signatories are the industrialized states of Europe, Canada and the United States. A vociferous opposition to the convention by interests that erroneously thought it might reduce tariffs was heard by the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Whether on that account or because they realized the importance of the convention itself, members of that committee in two executive sessions carefully probed official spokesmen to satisfy themselves that the convention did not affect the powers of the President or Congress. As a consequence, the resolution approving the convention took this unusual form: Having regard to and in reliance on the statement in the letter of January 16, 1961, from Secretary of State Herter to President Eisenhower and transmitted by him to the Senate on January 17, 1961, that “the U. S. representative will not have any additional powers in substantive matters to bind the United States after the convention enters into force than now exist in the Executive, but that any act of the Organization outside the power of the Executive will require action by Congress or the Senate, as the case may be, before the United States can be bound,” and having regard to and in reliance on the testimony of Secretary of the Treasury Dillon and Under Secretary of State Ball in behalf of the administration, and having regard to and in reliance on the Opinion of the Legal Adviser of the Department of State dated March 6, 1961, and quoted in the committee report of this convention:Resolved (Two-thirds of the Senators present concurring therein), That the Senate advise and consent to the ratification of the Convention on the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, together with two protocols relating thereto, signed at Paris on December 14, 1960, by representatives of the United States of America, Canada, and the 18 member countries of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (Executive E, 87th Congress, 1st session), with the interpretation and explanation of the intent of the Senate that nothing in the convention, or the advice and consent of the Senate to the ratification thereof, confers any power on the Executive to bind the United States in substantive matters beyond what the Executive now has, or to bind the United States without compliance with applicable procedures imposed by domestic law, or confers any power on the Congress to take action in fields previously beyond the authority of Congress, or limits Congress in the exercise of any power it now has.

Extradition statute—constitutional law—separation of powers—injunction against U.S. Government— class action: Lobue v. Christopher. 893 F.Supp. 65.

1996 ◽  
Vol 90 (1) ◽  
pp. 102-105
Author(s):  
Judith Hippler Bello ◽  
Jacques Semmelman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
District Of Columbia ◽  
The United States ◽  
Class Action ◽  
District Court ◽  
Department Of State ◽  
Secretary Of State ◽  
Northern District

U.S. District Court, D.C., August 31, 1995; modified September 15, 1995.This action involved a constitutional challenge to the 147-year-old extradition statute, 18 U.S.C. §3184, on die ground that it violates the separation of powers. Plaintiffs were two individuals who had been found extraditable to Canada, pursuant to the extradition treaty between die United States and Canada, by a U.S. magistrate judge in the Northern District of Illinois. They brought an action in the District of Columbia against the Secretary of State, the Department of State, and the United States for a judgment declaring the extradition statute unconstitutional, and an injunction against their extradition. Plaintiffs also sought certification of a class consisting of persons who are or will be under threat of extradition from the United States pursuant to the statute, and an injunction against any such extradition. The court held (per Lamberth, J.) that (1) the extradition statute violates the separation of powers and is therefore unconstitutional; (2) the United States is enjoined from taking any further act toward the surrender of the plaintiffs to Canada; and (3) the proposed class is certified, and the United States is enjoined from surrendering anyone under the statute.

Records of the United States Diplomatic and Consular Posts in West Africa, 1856-1935

1964 ◽  
Vol 2 (01) ◽  
pp. 18-32
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
The United States ◽  
District Courts ◽  
Department Of Justice ◽  
African Slave ◽  
Department Of State ◽  
Foreign Service ◽  
Record Group

The records described in this inventory belong to Record Group 84, Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State. They are both complementary and supplementary to records in Record Group 59, General Records of the Department of State. Both record groups contain communications and other papers transmitted between the Foreign Service posts and the State Department in Washington. In Record Group 45, Naval Records Collection of the Office of Naval Records and Library, are materials dealing with the African slave trade and Negro colonization. Papers relating to the slave trade and its suppression are to be found in Record Group 21, Records of the District Courts of the United States; Record Group 48, General Records of the Department of the Interior; Record Group 60, General Records of the Department of Justice; and Record Group 118, Records of the United States Attorneys and Marshals.

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