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Life of Thomas Jefferson

8. Declaration of Independence

Learn to do some HTML Life of Thomas Jefferson

8. Declaration of Independence

Still fixated on Jefferson. Smart guy, wrote the Declaration and all, but still doesn't speak to The Constitution validates the Declaration of Independence as a document of legislation.

So I'm still going to disbelieve that the Declaration has any legal standing.

Alan Keyes: "And that very simple train of logic, it seems to me, helps us to understand the relationship between the principles stated in the Declaration of Independence and what was then later formulated to be the instrument of government in this country, which is the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution represents an effort to put together a framework of government that reflects and respects the basic understanding of justice and right which is succinctly articulated in the Declaration. It is, to the Declaration, what an architect's drawing is to the scientific principles of engineering. So that the architect, with an understanding of those principles, puts together a framework in which those principles are embodied in a viable or workable model. And that is, of course, what our Founders were seeking to do when they put together the Constitution of the United States.

I say that not by way of speculation, either, but because that is in fact what they themselves said they were doing. If you read the debates in the federal convention, if you read the extensive debate that took place without doors after the convention was released to the general public for ratification in the thirteen states, you will find, running throughout that debate, a set of common assumptions and principles which were common not only to those who advocated the Constitution, but also to those who opposed it. They took a different view of whether or not, in fact, the Constitution of the United States, as it was prepared by that federal convention, would satisfy the requirements of justice. But their sense of what those requirements were was unanimous. There was a unanimous understanding that the aim or end of the exercise was a government that respected the basic rights of human beings, for the sake of which they declared, all of them, the American Revolution had been fought.

So I say that because it might come as a surprise and shock to some people, but there was no dispute in principle, when the Constitution was being debated and ratified, about the standard of judgment that was to be applied when you asked yourself whether it should be accepted or rejected. You read through the Federalist Papers, you read through the works of Brutus and others who opposed the arguments being made in the Federalist, and they all had common ground. They were all, perhaps, coming to some different prudential conclusions about whether what the Constitution proposed would in fact safeguard basic rights, respect what they commonly agreed to be the principles of small 'r' republican government. But they agreed in believing that the aim or end of the exercise was a frame of government that would respect those principles. There was, to put it simply, a common idea of justice which animated them all.

I think in the end it was, in fact, that adherence to a common idea of justice that made it possible for the Constitution to be adopted, and for that adoption to be respected in the beginning in spite of the very real differences that existed about whether the Constitution was a good one or a bad one, one that would last and serve liberty or one that would, in fact, erect an edifice to destroy it. And very strong opinions were expressed on one side and the other about this point of prudential judgment. What was not in dispute, however, was what the principles of judgment ought to be, what the idea of justice was, which animated those who engaged in the debate.