Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to James Madison in 1789 in which he said that the earth belongs to the living. The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead. The dead have neither power nor rights over it, one generation is to another as one independent nation to another. Jefferson's letter has often been quoted for the proposition that we should not be bound by the dead hand of the past, by the dead hand of the Constitution. That the Constitution should instead be interpreted as a living, breathing document subject to changing interpretations over time. But what people forget is Madison's response. In Madison's reply to Jefferson, Madison wrote, “If the earth be the gift of nature to the living, then their title can extend to the earth in its natural state only. The improvements made by the dead like the Constitution form a debt against the living who take the benefit of them.” “This debt,” Madison continued, “cannot be otherwise discharged than by a proportionate obedience to the will of the authors of the improvement - by a kind of originalism.” Well, who's right, Thomas Jefferson or James Madison? This is the key question at issue today in the debates over whether our Founders’ Constitution continues to bind us today. What Madison meant by the Constitution forming a debt against future generations, he didn't mean that this created sort of a requirement of blind veneration. After all, the Framers of 1787, were in some respects rejecting the innovations of the Founders of 1776. They were rejecting some of the innovations of the state governments between 1776 and 1787. So, of course, we the people can always deliberate and reflect upon the existing forms of government and determine whether those existing forms have room for improvement. And if that's the case, then we can have another Constitutional Convention, maybe we can have some Constitutional amendments. So by no means did Madison intend to convey that we are blindly venerating the Constitution, that we have a blind obligation to the Constitution. We are however indebted to that Constitution in so far as it creates this improvement upon the natural condition of the world. For it to create this debt against the living, that doesn't mean that we have to like every part of the Constitution. It doesn't mean we have to like every provision in it. In the same way, that we are bound by the laws enacted by Congress even if we don't like the laws that Congress enacts, we believe in our legal system, that so long as those laws were enacted by a process that confers sufficient legitimacy on the laws, we consider them sufficiently legitimate to be binding even if we don't like what they say. Well, the exact same argument can be made about the Constitution. So long as the Constitution on the whole successfully balances the two competing objectives of a free government, self-government on the one hand and the preservation of liberty on the other, it is on the whole sufficiently legitimate to be binding even if we don't like every provision of it.