Wurman at the Athenaeum

The Author of today’s reading is a CMC alum and spoke at the Athenaeum in 2016. I’ve copied the blog post below. He will also be speaking about the 14th Amendment this Wednesday. Sign up here.

https://www.cmc.edu/athenaeum/debt-against-living

A Debt Against the Living

Tue, October 25, 2016

 

Lunch Program

Ilan Wurman '09

Thomas Jefferson famously wrote in a letter to James Madison that the earth belongs to the living. Madison responded that the Constitution forms a debt against the living, and that the only way for future generations to faithfully discharge that debt is through a “proportionate obedience to the will of the authors of the improvement”—by originalism. In his Athenaeum talk, Ilan Wurman ’09 asks if James Madison was right. Does the Constitution indeed form a debt against the living? And if so, how do we faithfully discharge that debt—through originalism, or something else?

Ilan Wurman ‘09 graduated from CMC in 2009 with a major in government and physics. In 2013, he graduated from Stanford Law School and is now an attorney at Winston & Strawn LLP in Washington D.C. He was formerly the deputy general counsel of Rand Paul's presidential campaign and associate counsel on Tom Cotton's campaign for U.S. Senate in Arkansas. He has written extensively on constitutional interpretation and administrative law, and his writings have appeared in City Journal, National Affairs, The Weekly Standard, Commentary, and several academic law reviews. 

Wurman’s Athenaeum talk, A Debt Against the Living, is based on a forthcoming book on originalism and the Constitution where he addresses views expressed by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. 

In an oft-quoted letter to Madison, Jefferson asserts that the earth belongs to the living and that we cannot be bound by the "dead hand of the past," that the Constitution must be a "living, breathing" document that is continually updated in modern times. Less familiar, however, is Madison's response to Jefferson. If the earth be the gift of nature to the living, wrote Madison, then it belongs to them in its natural state only; the improvements made by the dead form a debt against the living, who take the benefit of them. This debt cannot be otherwise discharged, he wrote, than by a proportionate obedience to the will of the authors of the improvement—originalism.  

Who is right—Thomas Jefferson or James Madison? 

Wurman’s talk will address this difficult question and offer an answer in favor of Madison, originalism, and the Constitution. 

Ilan Wurman’s Athenaeum talk is co-sponsored by the Salvatori Center. 

View Video: YouTube with Ilan Wurman '09