Interessant nok var grunnleggerne ikke så verst oppegående på dette feltet. Originalismen oppstod senere. Thomas Jefferson skriver at USAs lover burde revideres hvert 19.-20. år, for å sikre at samfunnsutviklingen gjenspeiles i lovverket:
Proposals to Revise the Virginia Constitution: I. Thomas Jefferson to “Henry Tompkinson” (Samuel Kercheval), 12 July 1816
founders.archives.gov
Some men look at Constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, & deem them, like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. they ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well: I belonged to it, and labored with it. it deserved well of it’s country. it was very like the present, but without the experience of the present: and 40. years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading: and this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead.
I am certainly not an advocate for frequent & untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because when once known, we accomodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. but I know also that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. as that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. we might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilised society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors. it is this preposterous idea which has lately deluged Europe in blood. their monarchs, instead of wisely yielding to the gradual changes of circumstances, of favoring progressive accomodation to progressive improvement, have clung to old abuses, intrenched themselves behind steady habits, and obliged their subjects to seek, thro’ blood & violence, rash & ruinous innovations, which, had they been referred to the peaceful deliberations, & collected wisdom of the nation, would have been put into acceptable and salutary forms.
let us follow no such examples, nor weakly believe that one generation is not as capable as another of taking care of itself, and of ordering it’s own affairs. let us, as our sister-states have done, avail ourselves of our reason and experience to correct the crude essays of our first and unexperienced, altho’ wise, virtuous, & well meaning councils. And lastly, let us provide in our constitution for it’s revision at stated periods. what these periods should be Nature herself indicates. by the European tables of mortality, of the Adults living at any one moment of time, a majority will be dead in about 19. years. at the end of that period then a new majority is come into place; or in other words a new generation.
each generation is as independant of the one preceding, as that was of all which had gone before. it has then, like them, a right to chuse for itself the form of government it believes most promotive of it’s own happiness: consequently to accomodate to the circumstances in which it finds itself that recieved from it’s predecessors; and it is for the peace and good of mankind that a solemn opportunity of doing this every 19. or 20. years should be provided by the constitution; so that it may be handed on, with periodical repairs, from generation to generation to the end of time, if any thing human can so long endure.