Best Friends: The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution

For some time, I’ve had a squib in mind which connected the Declaration and Constitution. Professor William B. Allen of Michigan State University beat me to it some years ago with a paper that did just that. I encourage the reader to examine the entire work.

To the small extent that our Declaration is discussed in the public square and taught to our young anymore at all, discourse is typically limited to the clauses surrounding our unalienable rights and equality before God. Addressed far less often are the specific charges directed at King George III and how our Constitution dealt with these shortcomings, problems, and assaults on free government.

The first ten charges against George III dealt with his proscriptions against effective colonial lawmaking. George III ruled the colonials with powers no less absolute than the English Stuart monarchs of the 17th century. He got away with treating his distant subjects as if there had never been a Glorious Revolution in 1688.

For instance, all laws, both colonial and parliamentary, required the positive assent of the King. But whereas George III wouldn’t think of vetoing parliamentary statutes, he did so on a regular basis to colonial bills that reached him. Most proposed colonial legislation never got that far because the King’s Royal Governors ruled under strict guidelines which prohibited certain types of laws. Governors could also prorogue and dissolve colonial assemblies at will, which meant no law-making for extended periods.

As chartered legislative bodies were shut down, American colonials illustrated a Lockean nostrum regarding the legislative power; the legislative cannot be denied to civil society. From our Declaration:

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions from within.

Professor Allen wrote: “And where the constituted government—limited by this purpose—fails, it falls to the people speedily to provide such a government as can respect these limits and accomplish these results.” The American people did just that. They immediately formed ad hoc legislative bodies and never looked back.

Over a dozen years later, the lessons learned from George III’s attempted suppression of the legislative power which cannot be denied to civil society, are on display in Article I § 1 of the Constitution: “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.”

Declaration:
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

Constitution, Article I § 7:
Legislative bills are sent to the president for his assent or qualified veto. Two thirds vote of both houses may override the veto. If the president does not veto the bill, and does not return it to congress after a ten days, the bill becomes law.

Unlike our colonial forebears, we shall not be denied that which is essential to freedom: lawmaking.

Declaration:
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

Constitution, Article I § 2:
The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.

Declaration:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

Constitution:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

America circa 2016 faces a similar dilemma. Just as his Majesty’s colonies were denied their right to make law which best suited their circumstances and civil society, so too is lawmaking regularly denied to the states. For instance, the states are prohibited from defending themselves from foreign invasion. Between various court decisions, litigation from the Department of Social Justice, and diktats from the executive branch, the states are regularly denied self-government.

When oligarchs in Washington DC direct states to repeal laws which keep teenage boys out of girl’s bathrooms and locker rooms, free government is but a fantasy.

We are the many; our oppressors are the few. Be proactive. Be a Re-Founder of the American Republic. Join Convention of States.Sign the COS Petition.

Note the reference to Natural Law in the first sentence of our Declaration of Independence.

It is crystal clear that the Founding Fathers used the Natural Law definition of 'natural born Citizen' when they wrote Article II. By invoking "The Laws of Nature and Nature's God" the 56 signers of the Declaration incorporated a legal standard of freedom into the forms of government that would follow.

President John Quincy Adams, writing in 1839, looked back at the founding period and recognized the true meaning of the Declaration's reliance on the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God." He observed that the American people's "charter was the Declaration of Independence. Their rights, the natural rights of mankind. Their government, such as should be instituted by the people, under the solemn mutual pledges of perpetual union, founded on the self-evident truth's proclaimed in the Declaration."

I’ve had a squib in mind which connected the Declaration and Constitution. Professor William B. Allen of Michigan State University beat me to it some years ago with a paper that did just that.

Actually Scott Gerber did it back in 1996 with his book: To Secure These Rights.

Amazon's blub:

To Secure These Rights enters the fascinating--and often contentious--debate over constitutional interpretation. Scott Douglas Gerber here argues that the Constitution of the United States should be interpreted in light of the natural rights political philosophy of the Declaration of Independence and that the Supreme Court is the institution of American government that should be primarily responsible for identifying and applying that philosophy in American life.

ML/NJ

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