Constitutional dollar and age thresholds are frozen at obsolete 1791 values

Evidence

For example, the Seventh Amendment to the Constitution provides the right to a jury trial in any civil case at common law in a federal court in which the amount in controversy is “twenty dollars,” and it is obvious that the purpose behind the twenty-dollar minimum was to limit jury trials to cases in which substantial sums were involved. But although twenty dollars was a substantial amount of money in 1791, when the Seventh Amendment was adopted, it is hardly substantial anymore. — Frederick Schauer, Thinking Like a Lawyer, 42

Categorization

• QUESTION: Whether constitutional dollar amounts auto-adjust for inflation is a live interpretive question; the twenty-dollar jury minimum has never been updated.
• SEED: Angle: constitutional provisions whose fixed dollar/age thresholds have silently decayed, as a case study in rule rigidity over centuries.