Intergenerational Justice in the United States Constitution,
The Stewardship Doctrine:
I. Historic Overview
"People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors."
Edmund Burke f1
For the purposes of this article, I accept the widely held premise that no doctrine may be accorded constitutional
stature if it does not derive from the "original intent" of the framers. Put another way: no matter
how urgent the need for a particular legal approach may appear, that approach will not have "constitutional"
authority unless it be grounded in explicit constitutional text and supported by ancillary records of the founders'
intent. That being so, it is fortunate for posterity that the framers, and the intellectual predecessors upon
whom they relied, spoke as frequently and explicitly as they did on the topic of intergenerational equity. While
they may have harbored a few differences amongst themselves as to the precise contours of the rights and obligations
which exist between generations, the founding fathers clearly shared a strong belief that some such pattern
of rights and obligations must exist, and that recognition of such rights and obligations was crucial to the
legitimacy of any political society.
In holding this view, the founders stood squarely within a tradition of Western philosophic and legal opinion extending back at least as far as Classical Greece and the Old Testament - a tradition which in the last two centuries has largely disappeared from public discourse.f2 If we are to understand the founders' opinions and intentions in this area, we must reacquaint ourselves, at least cursorily, with the traditions of intergenerational philosophy upon which they drew.
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