In this article, Professor Sterk and Ms. Goldman examine the efficacy of constitutional debt limitations as a method of controlling the incurrence of public debt. In examining the historical development of such limitations, the authors conclude that they are responses to perceived deficiencies in the legislative process rather than reactions to specific instances of legislative abuse. The authors determine, however, that courts have transformed absolute contraints on legislative power to incur debt into more flexible limitations that leave the judiciary with a substantial role in determining the fate of proposed borrowing schemes. Moreover, the authors found that few states revised their constitutions in response to these transformative judicial decisions. These results lead the author to conclude that debt limitations, even if not rigidly enforced, provide a modest constraint on the legislative bias toward present spending and future payment.