Book Review
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Authors
Issue Date
1981
Volume
14
Issue
Type
Journal Article
Language
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
FIRST PARAGRAPH(S)|"Equality can be measured. It can be turned into numbers."|The history of America is the history of efforts to come to grips with the promise of the Declaration of Independence. To the Declaration's Framers, free republic government presupposed the essential moral equality of persons. "All men are created equal," wrote Jefferson; therefore, all had the right to self-government. |Of course, the immediate aim of the Colonial Congress which adopted the Declaration was to assert the rights of English Americans as Englishmen. Its devotion to equality did not extend to slaves and other black Americans, who were thought unfit to exercise the rights of Englishmen. Indeed, the general understanding of the Declaration would have been better conveyed had the Framers declared that "all white men are created equal," or more precisely, "all white men who own property .... " Instead, "When they declared, as they did, that 'all men are created equal' without introducing any qualifications, they created a document that put moral demands on all Americans who would ever quote it. " The idea of equality could not be cabined by the context from which it emerged. The promise of the Declaration was more important than its original purpose...
Description
Citation
14 Creighton L. Rev. 679 (1980-1981)
Publisher
Creighton University School of Law