Why do you think your paper is highly cited?

  Does it describe a new discovery or new methodology that's useful to others?

Ironically, I advocate an older methodology that is shockingly novel among law professors. Those scholars who have challenged older, more internationalist doctrines have done so by basing their work on the "original understanding" of the Constitution. This is part of a larger movement in the law towards relying on original understanding. This movement began during the Reagan era on the assumption that a return to original understanding would be a return to conservative results. But one problem with this view was that original understanding arguments were often advanced based on the most cartoonish type of historical research. Thus, in this and other work I have argued that constitutional scholars making historical arguments should approximate the rigor of historians. Once that happens, results almost always become more complex and are not always conservative by nature.

  Is it a condensation of previous literature on the subject?

Yes and no...yes in the sense that I was trying to place the question of what the Founders thought about treaties in the context of larger historical narratives about the founding of our nation and no in the sense that this whole area remains understudied and had traditionally required-and for that matter still requires-much additional research.

  Could you summarize the significance of your paper in layman's terms?

As the article concludes, sometimes the conventional wisdom is wise after all. Here the conventional wisdom is that treaties should be presumed "self-executing," that is, that they apply as Federal domestic law, as soon as they are ratified. This is what the Constitution seems to provide in stating that, "The Constitution . . . and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land." One assumption underlying this view is that the Founders understood that treaties would ordinarily be "self-executing." This assumption came under fire in an important article by a significant revisionist scholar. The only problem with this challenge, in my view, is that it is simply wrong. A closer examination, especially one more sensitive to the substance of larger historical developments, confirms that the Founders meant what they appeared to say. This has profound implications for an increasingly globalized world ordered by treaties. If we follow the Founders' example, presuming that treaties apply domestically could greatly speed the integration of the US into a world legal order; one that increasingly recognizes human rights, free trade, and has recently even begun to agree on a legal definition of terrorism as well as the means to combat it.