time a majority is entitled to rule. Any account of constitutional interpretation has to explain the undoubted binding force of a contemporaneous majoritarian decision. The second kind of answer asserting a conception of intergenerational identity is deeply woven into the way many people think about the Constitution. It speaks to something important. There is undoubtedly a human need, widely if not universally felt, to understand oneself as part of an ongoing tradition and to have a connection to earlier generations. This is often the way in which people understand themselves to be part of an ethnic group or a religious tradition. Many accounts that are implicitly offered to answer Jeffersons objection provide conceptions of what it is to be an American, conceptions that include fidelity to earlier generations decisions about the Constitution But the analogies to religious and ethnic identity ought to give us pause about using this kind of explanation for the binding character of the Constitution. People alive today in the United States, or any other reasonably heterogeneous community, will define the tradition to which they belong in different ways. Especially in view of the changes that have occurred over time, both immigration and the enfranchisement of a larger percentage of the population-changes that greatly exacerbate Jeffersons problem and that his account did not anticipate-relatively few people alive today are even descended from the people who participated in the great constitutional decisions of the past. Nearly all of us are being asked to accept decisions made by someone else's ancestors. We might choose to do so, but it is difficult to see why people should be required to identify with a tradition in that particular way4 time a majority is entitled to rule. Any account of constitutional interpretation has to explain the undoubted binding force of a contemporaneous majoritarian decision. The second kind of answer, asserting a conception of intergenerational identity, is deeply woven into the way many people think about the Constitution. It speaks to something important. There is undoubtedly a human need, widely if not universally felt, to understand oneself as part of an ongoing tradition and to have a connection to earlier generations. This is often the way in which people understand themselves to be part of an ethnic group or a religious tradition. Many accounts that are implicitly offered to answer Jefferson’s objection provide conceptions of what it is to be an American, conceptions that include fidelity to earlier generations’ decisions about the Constitution. But the analogies to religious and ethnic identity ought to give us pause about using this kind of explanation for the binding character of the Constitution. People alive today in the United States, or any other reasonably heterogeneous community, will define the tradition to which they belong in different ways. Especially in view of the changes that have occurred over time, both immigration and the enfranchisement of a larger percentage of the population—changes that greatly exacerbate Jefferson’s problem and that his account did not anticipate—relatively few people alive today are even descended from the people who participated in the great constitutional decisions of the past. Nearly all of us are being asked to accept decisions made by someone else’s ancestors. We might choose to do so, but it is difficult to see why people should be required to identify with a tradition in that particular way