Purpose: Repeal of Previous Executive Orders Regarding Panama
Date: May 28, 1924
(Original document available here)
WHEREAS, a Joint Resolution of Congress entitled a “Joint Resolution Authorizing the President to abrogate the international agreement embodied in certain Executive orders relating to the Panama Canal,” approved February 12, 1923, provides as follows: “Whereas it is provided in the Act entitled, ‘An Act to provide for the opening, maintenance, protection, and operation of the Panama Canal, and the sanitation and government of the Canal Zone,’ approved August 24, 1912, ‘that all laws, orders, regulations, and ordinances adopted and promulgated in the Canal Zone by order of the President for the government and sanitation of the Canal Zone and the construction of the Panama Canal are hereby ratified and confirmed as valid and binding until Congress shall otherwise provide’; and
“Whereas among the orders so ratified and confirmed as valid and binding are Executive Orders, issued by the Secretary of War, by direction of the President , on December 3, December 6, and December 28, 1904, January 7, 1905, and January 5, 1911, in which were embodied the terms of an agreement reached between the Secretary of War and officials of the Panama Government to serve as a modus operandi during the construction of the canal; and
“Whereas the purpose of the agreement in question has passed with the formal opening of the canal, and the agreement no longer provides an adequate basis for the adjustment of questions arising out of the relations between the Canal Zone authorities and the Government of Panama, and should be replaced by a more permanent agreement:
“Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the President be authorized to abrogate the international agreement embodied in the Executive orders issued as aforesaid, on December 3, December 6, and December 28, 1904, January 7, 1905, and January 5, 1911.“ Sec . 2. That when the President shall exercise the authority hereby granted, such orders shall no longer be valid and binding, and the legal effect of these orders given to them by the said Act of Congress approved August 24, 1912, shall be repealed.”
Now, therefore, I, Calvin Coolidge, President of the United States with of America, acting under and by virtue of the authority, conferred in me by the said Joint Resolution of Congress, do hereby declare and proclaim, in accordance with notice of my intention heretofore given to the Government of Panama, the abrogation as of June 1, 1924, of the international agreement embodied in the Executive Orders issued as aforesaid, on December 3, December 6, and December 28, 1904, January 7, 1905, and January 5, 1911.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. DONE at the City of Washington this twenty-eighth day of May in the year of Our Lord one thousand nine hundred and twenty-four and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and forty-eighth.
Citation: The Statutes at Large of the United States of America from December, 1923 to March, 1925
The Coolidge Foundation gratefully acknowledges the volunteer efforts of David McCann, who prepared this document for digital publication.