My remarks today are a celebration of sorts. This July marks America’s 250th birthday. A quarter millennium since we broke away from the Old World and charted our own course through the currents of world history. And what a journey it has been.
250 years is a major milestone. By some accounts, it is a turning point. In The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival, a scholar by the wonderfully British name of Sir John Bagot Glubb wrote about the lifespan of empires. Studying dynasties from the Assyrians, Persians, and Romans to the Ottomans, Romanovs, and British, he noticed a startling pattern: Each empire would typically last around 250 years.[1]
America certainly has an empire’s expanse. My long flights crisscrossing the country over the last couple days demonstrate as much. But America is distinctive: We began by splitting from an empire. On July 4, 1776, we declared our reasons. That Declaration set us apart in a more fundamental way—by promising that our government would rest not on imperial domination but on the consent of the governed.
To mark the Declaration’s semiquincentennial (quite a mouthful), let us give it a closer read and consider its lasting resonances. To that end, my remarks will proceed in three parts. First, I will examine some of the Declaration’s grievances about the Crown, focusing on its misuse of the colonial judiciary. Second, I will explore how the Founding Generation addressed those grievances, both in the Constitution’s written text and in early judicial practice. Third, I will propose some takeaways for those of us in the legal community today.
Start with the Declaration. . . .
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