Adjourning for the year, Congress stung the Clinton Administration by refusing to appropriate any funds for the payment of U.S. "arrearages" (unpaid assessments) to the United Nations. U.N. supporters contend that the U.S. must pay up in order to meet its "solemn legal obligations." Failure to pay, they assert, is "illegal" under the "treaty commitment" the U.S. entered into by ratifying the U.N. Charter in 1945.

This line of argument is flatly incorrect. Its widespread acceptance, moreover, is based on several misperceptions about the Constitution, U.S. obligations under international treaties, and the attendant policy implications for American decision makers.

First, treaties have no special or higher status than other acts of Congress or, for than matter, than the U.S. Constitution. There is widespread confusion on this point, even among sophisticated foreign policy analysts, based in large part on some expansive dicta by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in a 1920 Supreme Court decision. At the time of the U.N.'s formation, some pointed to Holmes's dicta to reinforce their worry that treaties might be used as a "back door" to amend the Constitution.

Perhaps sensing the need to quiet these concerns, the Supreme Court revisited the issue in 1957 in Reid v. Covert. It ruled that "no agreement with a foreign nation can confer power on the Congress, or on any other branch of Government, which is free from the restraints of the Constitution." It stressed that "this Court has regularly and uniformly recognized the supremacy of the Constitution over a treaty." Whatever the legal impact of a treaty, that impact must be determined consistently with the Constitution and subordinate American law.

Second, treaties are "law" only for U.S. domestic purposes. In their international operation, treaties are simply "political" obligations.

The Supreme Court recognized this distinction as far back as 1884, holding that a treaty "is a law of the land as an Act of Congress is, whenever its provisions prescribe a rule by which the rights of the private citizen or subject may be determined." As for the international aspects, the court held clearly that a treaty "depends for the enforcement of its provisions on the interest and honor of the governments which are parties to it." And if they don't work? "If these fail, its infraction becomes the subject of international negotiations and reclamations, so far as the injured party chooses to seek redress, which may in the end be enforced by actual war."

There may be good and sufficient reasons to abide by the provisions of a treaty; in most cases one would expect to do so because of benefits treaties provide, not because the U.S. is "legally" obligated to do so. As the Supreme Court stressed in 1889 in Chae Chan Ping v. U.S.: "whilst it would always be a matter of the utmost gravity and delicacy to refuse to execute a treaty, the power to do so was prerogative, of which no nation could be deprived without deeply affecting its independence."

Third, treaty obligations can be unilaterally modified or terminated by congressional action. This is the principle that U.N. advocates ignore when they argue that Congress is "legally bound" every year to authorize and appropriate precisely the same amount of money as that demanded by the U.N.'s assessment notice.

They argue, in effect, that Article 17 of the U.N. Charter (concerning the allocation of U.N. expenses among the members) strips Congress of its normal constitutional power and discretion over financial matters under the Constitution's Appropriations Clause (Article I, Section 9). It would certainly come as news to Congress that the U.N. Charter had modified its power over the purse. The Supreme Court has been consistent on this point. As it said in 1871 in The Cherokee Tobacco, "an act of Congress may supersede a prior treaty." There is no doubt that, whatever the U.N.'s assessment notice may say, Congress is fully within its rights to pay it, ignore it or do anything in between.

Fourth, American constitutional requirements override "international law." It's hard to imagine that any member of Congress would seriously argue the contrary point: That the U.S. is "bound" to pay its U.N. assessments because there is a "higher" authority--an authority over and above the Constitution--that somehow compels such a result.

Some acolytes of international law, however, make precisely that argument, contending that whatever the provisions of American jurisprudence, it must bend its knee to higher international authority. In their view, this is just the next step up from saying that state law gives way before contrary federal law. In that sense, they say, failing to acknowledge higher international authority renders the nonpayment of U.S. assessments "illegal."

The argument that the U.S. Constitution is subordinate to international law, erroneous though it is, at least has the virtue of clarity. Either the U.N. Charter amends the U.S. Constitution to diminish congressional discretion over appropriations or it does not. If it does, then the utopian internationalists are right, and the U.S. is a global outlaw. If not, then the normal constitutional powers of Congress (and the president) are undiminished, and Congress can legitimately override any treaty provision it chooses. There is no escape from this logic.

Of course, the decision on whether and what amounts the U.S. should pay for U.N. matters, political though it may be, is not an excuse for obtaining benefits on the cheap. It does not follow inevitably that because the U.S. is not legally obligated to pay, it should not pay. Instead, the correct conclusion is that the U.S. should meet its commitments when it is in its interests to do so and when others are meeting their obligations as well. It is precisely the dissatisfaction with the performance of other member governments and U.N. secretariats that has led to Congress's withholding of appropriations before--and which may well do so again.

John R. Bolton is the senior vice president of AEI.