It Is a Constitution We Are Expounding: A Debate

This nation, thank goodness, was not founded by men who looked at the future through rear-view mirrors. This nation added to the Constitution a Bill of Rights, established a bank, freed the prisoners of the Sedition Act,69 and sent Lewis and Clark into the great unknown. Most important, the drafters of the Constitution created a charter of liberty that could be adapted by all the branches of the government to meet the needs of a changing nation. Perhaps the real miracle at Philadelphia, then, was giving us a Constitution that recognized Jefferson's great truth: "The earth belongs always to the living generation ..." On that truth rests the case for a living jurisprudence.