Sovereignty Across Generations: A Restatment

This paper critically examines Alessandro Ferrara’s concept of Sequential Sovereignty (SAG), which holds that constitutions are co-authored by past, present, and future generations, thereby limiting the constituent and amending powers of any single generation. The critique targets SAG’s founders’ privilege – the notion that founding generations alone possess full constituent power and can define political identity without being bound by the past, unlike later generations who are constrained by historical constitutional commitments. This asymmetry, the author argues, results in intergenerational inequality, diminishing the sovereignty and democratic agency of non-founder generations. Further, Ferrara’s reliance on future validation for constitutional changes introduces contingent legitimacy, making later generations’ political autonomy dependent on historical and future acceptance. The author contends that such a framework risks domination by the past and conflicts with liberal-democratic ideals of equal political agency. To address these issues, the paper proposes a revised principle of constitutional legitimacy grounded in intergenerational equality and reciprocity, allowing each generation full constituent power so long as it respects the freedom of future ones.