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Abstract

The treaty power clause in the Constitution is more difficult to supplement by construction than most parts of that document because the mechanism set up was an innovation--a compromise between the tradition of executive treaty-making and the Colonial feeling that powers of government should be given to representative assemblies. There was no recognized institution to serve as a guide for interpretation as, for example, in the case of the jury trial clause. Furthermore, the dual nature of a treaty-it is a compact with the foreign power and also part of the municipal law-is a fruitful source of confusion. So it is not surprising that the absence of express language in the Constitution concerning termination of treaties left doubts which even today have not been very satisfactorily settled.

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