Reporting International Agreements to Congress under Case Act (Text of Agreements)
By statute, 1 U.S.C. 112b(a) , the Secretary of State is required to transmit to the Congress the text of any international agreement (including the text of any oral international agreement, which agreement shall be reduced to writing), other than a treaty, to which the United States is a party within 60 days of the agreement's entry into force. Where the immediate public disclosure of the agreement would be prejudicial to the national security of the United States, the Secretary transmits the agreements to the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate and the Committee on International Relations of the House of Representatives under an appropriate injunction of secrecy.
Also, under this same statute, “[a]ny department or agency of the United States Government which enters into any international agreement on behalf of the United States shall transmit to the Department of State the text of such agreement not later than twenty days after such agreement has been signed.”
In accordance with these authorities, all departments or agencies, as well as offices within the State Department and posts overseas, must transmit the text of any international agreement to the Office of the Assistant Legal Adviser for Treaty Affairs within 20 days of signature.
If there are any questions as to whether a particular arrangement constitutes an international agreement, please contact immediately the Office of the Assistant Legal Adviser for Treaty Affairs at (202)647-1345 or by e-mail to treatyoffice@state.gov. The Secretary of State generally is responsible for determining for and within the executive branch whether an arrangement constitutes an international agreement within the meaning of the statute.
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NOTE: Agreements reported from 1998 to May 2006 are available through the Department of State's Freedom of Information Act Document Collections search page. These documents are largely unedited and subject to possible correction before their official publication in TIAS. In addition, this is not a complete listing of agreements and is a temporary listing until agreements are published in TIAS.
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