Advice and Consent of the Senate

The phrase "advice and consent" appears in Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, which grants the president the power to make treaties and appoint officers "by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate." It is the principal mechanism through which the Senate checks the executive branch's foreign-policy and personnel powers.

Two distinct thresholds apply:

• Treaties require a two-thirds supermajority of senators present and voting. This high bar has shaped U.S. diplomatic history — the Senate's 1920 rejection of the Treaty of Versailles kept the United States out of the League of Nations, and concerns about ratification have pushed presidents toward executive agreements and "congressional-executive agreements" (such as NAFTA) that bypass the treaty clause.
• Nominations — including Cabinet secretaries, ambassadors, Supreme Court justices, and other federal judges — require only a simple majority. Since rules changes in 2013 (lower-court and executive nominees) and 2017 (Supreme Court nominees), the filibuster no longer applies to confirmations, so a bare majority suffices.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee typically vets treaties and ambassadorial nominations; the Judiciary Committee handles judicial picks. The Senate may attach reservations, understandings, and declarations (RUDs) to a treaty's resolution of ratification, modifying how the U.S. interprets or applies it — a practice used, for example, with the 1992 ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The original drafters at the 1787 Constitutional Convention envisioned the Senate as a genuine advisory body to the president on foreign affairs. In practice, presidents rarely consult senators before negotiating, so "advice" has largely collapsed into post-hoc "consent." The clause does not extend to treaty termination, which the Supreme Court declined to resolve in Goldwater v. Carter (1979), leaving withdrawal authority effectively with the president.