70 Year Magazine Archive

Bulwark of Sovereignty

by Holmes and Hunter Alexander

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They called him Auld Tawm Connally of Texas. He was the last of the string-tie, serpent-tongued senators. He wore his white hair like a mane and his black sombrero like a defiant badge of individualism. As Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations under Roosevelt and Truman (he still lives, an invalid, in Washington), Connally was an acknowledged internationalist— all but once.

Ironically, he attained immortality as the author of the famous Connally Amendment or Reservation—to this day the bane of the One Worlders. By inserting six little words—“as determined by the United States”— in a Senate Resolution in 1946, the Senator allowed this nation to preserve its internal and sovereign interests from the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice — a body of feeble, indistinct and sometimes ludicrous nature. His amendment passed the 79th Senate 51-12, and has withstood violent and repeated assaults for repeal. Denison Kitchel, a Phoenix lawyer, tells how and why the Connally Amendment has survived.

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