The founders themselves recognized this. During the Philadelphia Convention, the Virginia delegate George Mason warned that the new constitution “will certainly be defective.” So constitutions should bind future generations—but not too tightly. If the barriers to change are too cumbersome, present-day majorities risk being trapped in an “iron cage” of rules that don’t reflect society’s needs and prevailing values. When this happens, intergenerational counter-majoritarianism becomes a serious problem.
