The United States is pulling out of the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.  The protocol requires signatories to let the International Court of Justice (ICJ) make the final decision when their citizens say they have been illegally denied the right to see a home-country diplomat when jailed abroad.  The United States proposed the protocol in 1963 and ratified it in 1969. 

The United States originally backed the measure as a way to protect its citizens abroad, and was the first country to use it before the ICJ, or World Court, successfully suing Iran for taking 52 hostages in Tehran in 1979.  Other countries, however, have successfully complained before the World Court that the US was not adhering to the procedures that go along with the protocol, and their citizens were sentenced to death by U.S. states without receiving access to diplomats from their home countries, according to the Washington Post. 

The decision of the United States does not affect the rest of the Vienna Convention, which requires its 166 signatories to inform foreigners of their right to see a home-country diplomat when detained overseas.  According to some legal analysts, withdrawal from the protocol means that the United States will not be obligated to the decisions of the World Court.  Others are saying this decision will weaken protections for U.S. citizens abroad. 

State Department officials told the Post that fewer than 30 percent of the signatories to the Vienna Convention had agreed to the protocol.  Among those that had not done so are Spain, Brazil and Canada.