Certainty and treaties

[Doyle Srader <DSRADER@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU>]

Opening comment: I like the treaties topic. I think I included something
like it in my "concrete verbs" post a few months back. Good subject
area, good limits.

But let's not be so confident that we know from day one what the topic
will look like. We thought we had arrived at that kind of nirvana back
on the privacy topic <NDT 1991-92> with the "recognizing a
constitutional right to privacy" wording, because we were persuaded that
"recognizing" meant upholding and "constitutional right to privacy"
meant cases from the Griswold line. By season's end, we'd had tons of
fourth amendment cases, tons of cases overruling decisions that had
*mentioned* privacy <the first paragraph of the majority opinion in
Bowers v. Hardwick, one of the most popular cases on the topic,
essentially said "This case is NOT about privacy"> and a few cases
<Washington v. Harper, DeShaney v. Winnebago County> that never
mentioned the word.

These are still _debaters_ we're talking about, and they're going to
find ways around our best-laid plans. It's not an argument against the
topic, but it is a caution against overclaiming what we might achieve.

Doyle Srader
University of Georgia
<706> 548-9938

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