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This guide was originally created by Caitlin Hunter in 2018 and is regularly updated by the library staff.
Treaties are passed in the following stages:
The procedure for passing treaties is itself governed by a treaty, known as the:
Treaties may be:
Not surprisingly, the more parties there are to a treaty, the easier it usually is to find.
Treaties go by a dizzying variety of names, including accord, charter, concordat, constitution (of an international organization), covenant, final act, or pact. Certain names imply certain types of treaties:
U.S. treaties are further divided into two types:
Under international law, it is is generally irrelevant whether the U.S. passed a treaty through advice and consent or as an executive agreement. However, the distinction sometimes matters when locating the full-text of the treaty and matters when researching the history of a treaty's passage.
For more information on how U.S. treaties are passed, see the comprehensive study prepared by the Library of Congress' Congressional Research Service at the request of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and published as: