Liveblogging Madison and Jefferson: Jefferson Versus Original Intent
"Jefferson believed that one generation could not be trusted to safeguard the interests of the next... the people deriving benefits from the federal Constitution had to be the living users of the text. The Constitution's meaning could not be stagnant; it's understood benefits had to be progressively redefined. 'No society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law'... He meant, too, that there was no original intent : the founding generation could not make the Constitution into a property monopolized by its authors, eternally empowering themselves to control its value and application." -- Madison and Jefferson , p. 205