At worst it would make people think "wow, I can't trust the government to uphold agreements 100+ years out into the future if some information comes along to suggest that they shouldn't be upheld", which seems like... exactly what the public should think?

If you're an american, what about the bill of rights, the right to a jury, the right to free speech, etc. Are those ancient agreements acceptable?

Of course I never said anything was “unacceptable” by virtue of its age.

> it would shake the confidence in governments

Deciding ancient laws, no matter how sucky, must all be iron-clad & that modernity/the future get no say is critically de-legitimizing, and in these cases seems to be headed quickly for cataclysm.

Giving alive people some sovereign rights over the dead, as is the case with these water rights issues, seems necessary to maintain the basic social contract, to maintain the mandate of the people. Not fixing this seems deeply de-legitimizing.

The "basic social contract" in the United States is the United States Constitution along with individual state constitutions. Our system of law is not about making the determined mob of "alive" people happy right now. Higher-trust complex societies need things to change slowly to maintain that trust. If anything, I'm even more "de-legitimized" when your state steals my water rights.

I find this intransigent view of what change might look like to be staggeringly repugnant. I think it represents a very staid, limited, unwilling view of how society ought be willing to adapt to conditions it finds itself in. calling modern situations a mob, discarding obvious crisis out of hand: that delegitimizes the trust your post claims is of such utmost importance.

you talk about slow change, but there seems to be nothing at all that society can change. we seem perpetually bound in old grants & fantastic claims. the only suggestions I've heard from anyone are that society must bargain for its basic human rights to survive, in apocalypse situations, that these vast vast vast free grants have caused.

color me very very very skeptical of your so called ideas of stability: I think you have it very wrong. there seem to be no rights given to the future, nothing reserved or allotted to the general population. I've little trust on your claim that that defines stability, that all new comers must fend for themselves amid a situation of dire need: caring only for the getsntocratic olds seems uncivil, ill governed, the very definition of illegitimate.

I'm not saying that. I'm just saying those agreements / rights are theirs until a court decides they ain't. That is the proper process. We can't just ignore them completley.