Scott Kuhagen did a little digging in response to recent developments in the case of Mohamed Mohamed Hassan Odaini, and found out that Jefferson was quite the flip-flopper on habeas corpus (and when he snubbed the principle, he did it much more flagrantly than Cheney ever did!).
When you really start looking at the founders, they look more like modern public figures than we usually like to admit. That shouldn't be surprising, but I think to a lot of people it is. For another example, see an earlier post of mine on Madison's flip-flopping on the question of internal improvements.
Since Jefferson was not involved in the writing nor the debate regarding the Constitution, his views on it do not merit much attention. Really, what one should be looking for is how the public viewed it and the words in it in 1789.
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