LEGAL MEMO

Questions:

  • Is any participation and funding of the United Nations (and its subsidiary and/or associated organizations) legal?
  • Was the UN Charter ratified as a Treaty by the US Senate or is it merely a contract between the United States and an international association?
  • Is the absence of the required deposit of the formal Instrument of Ratification evidence that the UN Charter was not lawfully ratified?
  • Are the UN Charter and related UN documents (such as the WHO Constitution) binding on State governments under the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution?
  • Are the UN Charter and related UN documents binding in any way on the United States?
  • What binding obligations does membership in the UN (and its subsidiary organizations) impose on the United States?
  • Was the manner in which then President Harry S. Truman presented the Charter to the US Senate unconstitutional as conceived in deceit, maintained in deceit and thus ultra vires, beyond the power of the President and Senate?
  • Are any signatories to the UN Charter bound, as if by a “Treaty”, to either the UN or its Member States?

[E] The US State Department, as official Depository, has published a document showing the ratifications of the original members. This excerpt shows the initial US signing of the Charter by the Secretary of State in June of 1945 and the date in August of 1945 when President Truman signed the Charter while he was in Europe at the Potsdam Conference [4]4.

  1. http://www.sfmuseum.org/un/signing.html ↩︎
  2. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/full-text ↩︎
  3. https://www.senate.gov/about/resources/pdf/un-charter-roll-call-vote-1945.pdf ↩︎
  4. https://2017-2021.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/298-UN-Charter.pdf ↩︎
  5. https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/photograph-records/64-50 ↩︎
  6. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945v01/introduction ↩︎
  7. https://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/1_1_1969.pdf ↩︎
  8. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-1090/pdf/COMPS-1090.pdf ↩︎
  9. https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/public-papers/69/address-senate-urging-ratification-charter-united-nations ↩︎
  10. https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/TIF-2020-Full-website-view.pdf ↩︎
  11. https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/TIF-Supplement-Report-2023.pdf ↩︎
  12. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/full-text ↩︎
  13. https://www.state.gov/depositary-information/ ↩︎
  14. https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-strikes-down-chevron-curtailing-power-of-federal-agencies/ ↩︎