I hear people mindlessly repeat that. But, in fact, it is cited as the basis for American law.
Go look at the 1972 Byrn vs. New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation case, which was a pivotal one on the road to Roe.
In his brilliant dissent, Judge Adrian Burke cites the Declaration, and declares that it has the force of law:
The more telling fact than the present legislation's irrationality is its unconstitutionality. The unconstitutionality stems from its inherent conflict with the Declaration of Independence, the basic instrument which gave birth to our democracy. The Declaration has the force of law and the constitutions of the United States and of the various States must harmonize with its tenets. The Declaration when it proclaimed "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" restated the natural law. It was intended to serve as a perpetual reminder that rulers, legislators and Judges were without power to deprive human beings of their rights.
Unless there had been a Thomas Jefferson who was educated by a philosophy professor to know the primacy of the natural law -- there would be no United States of America. For, if the Declaration had been written by a pragmatist for expedient reasons we never could have enlisted the sympathies and agreement of such a large part of the then world, including members of the British Parliament in our righteous cause. They would know the pragmatic reasoning would be nothing more than pettifoggery, and had no basis in law.
We began our legal life as a Nation and a State with the guarantee that these were inalienable rights that come not from the State but from an external source of authority superior to the State which authority regulated our inalienable liberties and with which our laws and Constitutions must now conform. That authority alone establishes the norms which test the validity of State legislation. It also tests the Constitutions and the United Nations Convention against genocide which forbids any Nation or State to classify any group of living human beings as fit subjects for annihilation. In sum, there is the law which forbids such expediency. It is the inalienable right to life in the nature of the child embryo who is "a human" and is "a living being".
Inalienable means that it is incapable of being surrendered (Webster's Third New International Dictionary). Thus, the butchering of a foetus under the present law is inherently wrong, as it is an illegal interference with the life of a human being of nature.
The report of the Governor's commission explanation that it was not dealing with "morality" but only law, overlooked the fact that it turned its back on the law -- the natural law reiterated in the Declaration of Independence. The reasons given for the enactment of the present abortion law are irrational from a medical, scientific and factually objective analysis. There is no need for abortion except in very limited medical circumstances.
EXACTLY - Thank you!
It isn’t a founding document, it is THE founding document!
Dissents are not law. The majority opinion, to which the dissenter responding is the law.
Dissents do not have the force of law, in fact they are "dissenting" against what the established (by the Court) law actually is.
2. A NY Court of Appeals decision is authoritative only in the State of NY. It carries no weight whatsoever with the Federal Courts on issues of Federal Law.
Don't try to play amateur lawyer. You're not particularly good at it.