If only self-executing meant what it sounds like it means . . .

I figure it’s never too late to catch up on some of last week’s April 1 reporting.  The Harvard Law Record got a great “scoop” with this story:

Speaking to a lunch seminar held by the National Security Law Association, Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was shocked to discover that the term “self-executing” did not exactly mean what he had imagined when he voted for a new arms reduction treaty with Russia earlier this year.

Inhofe, a Republican, approved the treaty on the belief that the “self-executing” language had been sneakily inserted by members of his party in order to make the law ineffective upon passage.

“Wait, what?” the 75 year old lawmaker, who has served in the Senate for 16 years, exclaimed. “I literally thought ‘self-executing’ mean that the law would be dead on arrival. Well, this is embarrassing,” he admitted to the audience, which consisted primarily of law students and a reasonable number of Cambridge hobos, many of whom were the most amused at Inhofe’s error.

“I mean, this is pretty much foreign relations law 101,” said Jack McGrinty, a begging fixture in Harvard Square. “I bet he doesn’t even know the Senate has ultimate treaty-making authority. Well, at least this chump’s ignorance at least means that we now live in a safer world, for once”. He later added, “spare some change?”

All joking aside, I wonder how many U.S. Senators actually know what it means for a treaty to be non self executing  (or what criteria identify such treaties)?  They do have the advice and consent power after all.  On the other hand, a uniform definition may be pretty hard to come by when academics can’t even agree on a single definition, or two, or three, or four, or . . . well you get the idea.