the significance, if any, of the Declaration of Independence

Anton Sherwood (dasher@netcom.com)
Mon, 09 Mar 1998 19:57:22 -0700

> Reilly Jones wrote
> > The D of I is America's Articles of Incorporation, the Constitution is
> > merely its By-Laws. The By-Laws have no meaning without organic reference
> > to the Articles of Incorporation. When the Supreme Court makes decisions
> > that are cut free from the D of I, it is acting as a law unto itself with
> > no legitimacy at all, simply brute force *if* it can get the executive and
> > legislative branches to acquiesce.

The Declaration never had any force of law. It can be referred to as
a source of information about what the Framers might have meant by
"proper" or "reasonable" or "rights retained", but it's not privileged
in that respect.

It's great for hitting Big Brother with the hypocrisy stick, though.
"A government which still celebrates the anniversary of a document
condemning certain practices, has embraced many of those practices..."

Michael Lorrey wrote:
> Sorry, the Declaration of Independece is more of a Divorce Writ, not a marriage
> license. It defined why we no longer were members of the British Empire. It
> made no mention of the United States of America

so far so good

> (indeed, for that political
> entity was not to exist for another 16+ years thereafter, and was actually a
> succeeding organization to the Congress under the Articles of Confederation.),

Er, you mean 6 years?

> so it has very little in relation to the Constitution other than sharing the
> same author.

Well, the institutional author of the Constitution was a successor
to the institutional author of the Declaration, but that's about it.

-- 
"How'd ya like to climb this high without no mountain?" --Porky Pine
Anton Sherwood   *\\*   +1 415 267 0685
!! visiting New Mexico, end of March !!