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Podcast: Cato Event Podcast
Episode: A Debt Against the Living: An Introduction to Originalism
Description: Thomas Jefferson famously wrote that the earth belongs to the living. His letter to James Madison is often quoted for the proposition that we should not be bound to the “dead hand of the past,” suggesting that the Constitution should instead be interpreted as a living, breathing document. Less well known is Madison’s response, in which he said that the Constitution forms a debt against the living, who take the benefit of it. This debt, Madison claimed, could only be discharged by a kind of originalism. Who is right? Thomas Jefferson or James Madison? Please join us for a conver...