Constitutions enshrine the fundamental values of a people and they build a framework for a state’s public policy. With regard to generational change, their endurance gives rise to two interlinked concerns: the sovereignty concern and the forgone welfare concern. If constitutions are intergenerational contracts, how (in)flexible should they be? This article discusses perpetual constitutions, sunset constitutions, constitutional reform commissions and constitutional conventions, both historically and analytically. It arrives at the conclusion that very rigid constitutions are incompatible with the principle of (...) intergenerational justice. Recurring constitutional reform commissions in fixed time intervals would give each generation of citizens a say without leaning too much to the side of flexibility. (shrink)

Abstract. In this article two conceptions of what it means to say that all affected persons should be granted the right to vote in democratic elections are distinguished and evaluated. It is argued that understanding "affected" in legal terms, as referring to the circle of people bound by political decisions, has many advantages compared to the view referring to everyone affected in mere causal terms. The importance of jurisdictions in deciding rights to democratic influence should hence be recognized more clearly (...) than it currently is in democratic thinking. (shrink)

A recent trend in futures studies has called for strengthening the inclusion of future generations in constitutional law. This is problematic from a practical and a normative viewpoint. This paper introduces a future-oriented theory of democratic constitutionalism that overcomes originalism (which privileges the past) and living constitutionalism (which privileges the present) without resorting to the explicit constitutional protection of the yet unborn. It is divided into five sections. The first challenges the notion that the constitutional entrenchment of the non-overlapping future (...) is the best means of implementing long time horizons in democratic legal systems. The second maintains that constitutions are substantive normative expressions of the ultimate justification of authority. The third demonstrates that the substantive dimension of constitutions is cross-temporal and includes what I call ‘the objective interests in the future’ of all members of the people. The fourth connects such objective interests with rights to political participation. The final section focuses on the cross-temporal role of constitutional adjudication. Because rights to political participation include objective interests in the future and necessarily hold the status of constitutional rights in any legitimate democratic constitution, constitutional adjudication must guarantee their enforcement over government action. (shrink)