ratificare

Ratify arrives from Medieval Latin ratificare, a compound of ratus — past participle of reri, to reckon or consider fixed — and facere, to make. The ratus element is rich: it gives English ratio, rational, and rate. Something ratus was settled, calculated, confirmed. To ratify was to make something fixed that had previously been provisional — to transform a conditional agreement into a binding commitment.

In Roman law, ratus described a transaction or judgment that had been formally confirmed. An agreement was reached informally, then made ratum — rendered firm, official, beyond retraction. Medieval lawyers adapted this vocabulary to the new circumstances of treaty-making between emerging European states. A treaty signed by negotiators was valid but incomplete; ratification by the sovereign or legislature made it binding on the state itself.

The distinction between signing and ratifying proved crucial and often contentious. American history is peppered with treaties signed by presidents and rejected by the Senate — the Treaty of Versailles most famously, which Woodrow Wilson negotiated and the Senate refused to ratify. The United States never joined the League of Nations it had helped create. A signature without ratification is an aspiration; ratification converts intention into obligation.

Modern international law has elaborated this structure into a careful sequence: signature, ratification, accession, entry into force. Each stage has specific legal effects. Treaties may languish for decades between signing and ratification. The Geneva Conventions, the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Rome Statute — all passed through this sequence, their power contingent on states performing the act the Latin lawyers called ratum facere: making it fixed.