The Imperative for Constitutional Renewal
Beau Breslin and Prairie Gunnels
Monday, October 20
For more than two centuries, we Americans have regarded our Constitution as a fixed star—a text to be revered rather than revised. Has this reverence become a liability?
Saratoga Torch Club will host Professor Beau Breslin and Prairie Gunnels for a provocative exploration of this question, bridging two centuries of constitutional thought.
Dinner ($40) will start at 6 p.m. at the Saratoga Springs Holiday Inn. Free presentation will follow at 7 p.m.
To reserve a place, write Gerald Stulc at gstulc73@gmail.com
Reimagining Jefferson’s Lost Ideal
Beau Breslin, the Joseph C. Palamountain Jr. Chair in Government at Skidmore College, has long wrestled with a question Thomas Jefferson posed in a letter to James Madison: Should each generation have the right to rewrite its own fundamental law? Madison, the principal architect of the Constitution, famously said no, arguing for continuity and stability. Jefferson said yes, insisting that “the earth belongs to the living,” and that to be governed by the past is to be ruled by the dead.
In his acclaimed 2021 book A Constitution for the Living, Breslin transformed this forgotten philosophical exchange into a thought experiment: what might have happened if Jefferson’s radical idea had prevailed? Now, together with his student and collaborator Prairie Gunnels, he is bringing that experiment into the 21st century—armed with artificial intelligence.
Gunnels, a Skidmore sophomore, provided the spark. Invited in Breslin’s class to use ChatGPT to draft a constitution reflecting the values of Generation Z, she watched as the AI composed a preamble steeped in authenticity, equity, and environmental urgency.
“It was like holding up a mirror to our generation,” she recalls. What began as a classroom exercise soon evolved into a national research project: using generative AI to compose full-length constitutions for each of America’s seven living generations, from the Greatest Generation to Gen Alpha.
The result is a striking portrait of America’s evolving civic soul. The Greatest Generation’s constitution emphasizes duty, sacrifice, and unity; Generation Z’s calls for inclusion, sustainability, and emotional well-being. Between them lies the long arc of an American story still unfolding—one that asks what democracy means in an age of algorithms, global networks, and generational change.
The project’s findings are both sobering and illuminating. The younger generations’ AI-assisted constitutions reimagine government itself—proposing new democratic mechanisms such as citizen assemblies, intergenerational councils, and environmental courts. They call for “positive rights” to health, education, and housing, and for systems designed to represent future citizens, not only the living.
At the same time, these generational visions reveal a deep unease with the inherited framework of the republic. Where older generations spoke of duty and restraint, the younger ones speak of transparency and transformation. The contrast lays bare a nation divided not just by politics, but by time itself.
Questions for the Evening
Breslin and Gunnels guide Torch Club members through this grand experiment, inviting reflection on questions as timely as they are timeless:
What would it mean to reimagine the Constitution in the age of artificial intelligence?
How might we balance the expansion of individual rights with the restoration of civic duty?
Can the American republic remain stable if it is unwilling to renew itself?
And, in Jefferson’s haunting phrase, are we governed today by the living—or by the dead?
An evening of profound dialogue awaits—where history meets possibility, and the oldest questions of democracy are asked anew in the language of a new age.
