> The question Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side of the water… (But) between society and society, or generation and generation there is no municipal obligation, no umpire but the law of nature. We seem not to have perceived that, by the law of nature, one generation is to another as one independant nation to another… On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation… Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19. years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right.

I think Thomas Jefferson is a reputable source for my assertion.

If the US were founded on this principle… it would have been part of the constitution.

If that were true, we wouldn't have had the first block of amendments. There's plenty of stuff that didn't make it into the original constitution because the founders thought it was obvious.

This largely ignores the rest of society and what they were thinking. From the first perspective, these are all ideas that got smuggled in.

They can also declare that legislation violates human rights, but that declaration is non-binding. They are effectively just asking Parliament to go back and fix the law.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_Ki...

You need more than one because the founding of the US was a group effort. Not all ideas pitched by any given founder made it in, and even when one did many of those who voted to include it had a different understanding of what it meant.