Writing to his friend James Madison from Paris in September 1789, Thomas Jefferson loftily asserted that “no society can make a perpetual constitution,” because the “earth belongs in usufruct to the living” and therefore one generation should not bind future generations. Jefferson therefore anticipated that the new U.S. Constitution would expire in 19 years. No crystal balls in Paris.

Two hundred and thirty-three years later, the Constitution is very much unexpired. Jefferson’s future generations have some made textual additions, some of radical significance—think the three Reconstruction Amendments and the 19th Amendment securing the right to vote for women—but the document still binds. Likely in ways that would have left Jefferson aghast given his scathing views of judicial review.

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