1776—The Declaration of Independence is a stirring statement of America’s creed, but is it also a sexist and xenophobic document?
Defending the Supreme Court’s increasing use of foreign law in support of its rulings on the meaning of the Constitution, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg titles a 2005 speech “‘A decent Respect to the Opinions of [Human]kind’: the Value of a Comparative Perspective in Constitutional Adjudication.” Obtusely appealing to the Declaration of Independence to justify the Supreme Court’s dependence on foreign law, Ginsburg cannot resist the urge to purge the gender bias she perceives in the Framers’ observation that “a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind” requires a declaration of the “causes which impel them to the Separation.” Nor, apparently, does she notice that one of those stated causes was that King George III “has combined with others to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution.” (See here for more on Ginsburg’s embarrassingly shoddy speech.)
2010—Days after Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan can’t bring herself to express her personal agreement with the “self-evident” truth set forth in the Declaration of Independence that all human beings “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” the same Senate Democrats who ardently push for her confirmation head outside the Beltway to profess homage to the Declaration in Fourth of July celebrations with their constituents.
