The Panama Canal finally came under full Panamanian control on January 1st this year, but no one seemed to remember the man who made it possible. Judge Paul Hatfield, who died on July 3rd aged 72, was the central figure in one of President Jimmy Carter's narrowest legislative shaves when, as the new senator for Montana, he voted to ratify the treaty which passed the canal's sovereignty to Panama.
President Carter came to office in 1977 proclaiming his determination to complete the task that his Democratic predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, had started in 1964, when he said he would abrogate the 1903 Panama Canal treaty, negotiate a new pact recognising Panama's sovereignty over the canal zone.
Letters opposing the move poured into Capitol Hill. The result was a Republican amendment to the State Department's appropriations bill, then going through the House of Representatives, stipulating that no money could be spent to "negotiate the surrender or relinquishment of any United States rights in the Panama Canal zone".
But the newly elected President Carter forged ahead with negotiations. In September 1977 two related treaties were signed. There was increased uproar, with one of the president's most implacable opponents, the former governor of California, Ronald Reagan, commenting: "The canal is ours. We stole it fair and square."
Having signed the treaty, the Carter administration made a hopeless mess of the campaign to get it ratified. On January 12th 1978, Senator Lee Metcalf of Montana died and the state governor exercised his right to appoint a temporary successor, another Democrat, Montana's chief justice, Paul Hatfield. Suddenly Judge Hatfield found himself thrust into this extraordinary turmoil.
The only experience he had ever had of anything approaching politics was during the extremely gentlemanly 1960 campaign for his first judicial post. After that he had worked his way steadily up the legal ladder until elected to head Montana's supreme court in 1977. Apart from brief army service in the Korean war, his life had been spent administering the law in one of the country's least-populated states.
He arrived in Washington to find opponents of the treaty operating at full force, arranging for every senator to receive up to 4,000 denunciatory letters a week. Meanwhile, President Carter kept postponing the televised address his staff thought might turn the tide. When he finally gave it in February 1978, it was so poor that the CBS network would only transmit excerpts.
With the treaty in increasing jeopardy the spotlight fell remorselessly on the new senator from Montana. Paul Hatfield kept his own counsel throughout the spring of 1978. The crunch came in April when the treaty reached the senate floor.
It looked virtually certain to die until Senator Hatfield - an unelected member who had served just 53 days - cast the 67th vote for ratification. Amid the uproar, he maintained that the decision had been his alone and that no one had got to him. "That's what a judge's life is," he said, "making decisions."
The following evening, when he addressed an ex-servicemen's meeting in his home town, he was booed into silence. He was dubbed "Panama Paul", and a petition was launched to deprive him of his senate seat, though it was eventually ruled legally invalid.
In 1979 President Carter appointed him to the federal bench, where he remained until his death. His role in the Panama Canal story is a reminder of how rocky the path of American foreign policy can sometimes be, especially if Paul Hatfield had voted the other way.
His wife Dorothy, whom he married in 1958, predeceased him. He is survived by their three children.
Paul Gerhart Hatfield: born 1928; died, July 2000