Message from Christopher Hughes and Soyeun Choi, Co-Chairs of the Business Law Section

Two hundred and fifty years ago, a group of extraordinarily brave individuals gathered in Philadelphia and broke ground on a new direction for the historical trajectory of human governance.  They declared to their king – and the world – that in this new country, the age of kings was over.  They declared that government exists to serve the people, not the other way around.  And, they declared that when government fails that purpose, the people have not only the right, but the duty, to say so.

On July 4, many of us celebrated Independence Day with the pride and gratitude it deserves.  The American experiment has endured for two and a half centuries, through civil war, depression, world wars, and countless moments when the promise of the Declaration of Independence seemed impossibly distant from the reality of American life.  Generation after generation of Americans have believed in the promise enough to fight for it.  Some paid with their lives.  All paid with their effort.

To fully celebrate our potential, we must be honest about what that promise meant in 1776 and what it means today.  The men who wrote “all men are created equal” withheld these liberties and rights from women, those who were enslaved, Indigenous peoples, and those without property.  The promise of the Declaration was aspirational at its inception, a standard that the founders themselves failed to meet, and one that subsequent generations struggle to fulfill throughout the intervening years.  The abolition of slavery, the suffrage of women, the civil rights movement, and countless other movements each extended the Declaration’s promise towards its own stated ideal.  But change develops imperfectly and incompletely.  We have progressed significantly in two hundred and fifty years, but we have not yet arrived at the destination promised to us by our founders.  As this country’s journey continues, ensuring that “this land was made for you and me,” and as we gain and lose ground, our founders’ aspirations endure.   Frederick Douglass eloquently explained: “The principles contained in [the Declaration] are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.”

The Declaration has endured for two hundred and fifty years because we are still committed to the premise that we are a government of laws, accountable to the people, restrained by their consent, and committed to the proposition that every human being possesses rights that no government can legitimately take away.  Every generation contributes to this premise.  It is imperfect work that has seen countless interruptions, corruptions, and setbacks.  It is work advanced by abolitionists and suffragists, by civil rights marchers and labor organizers, and by immigrants who came to this country because the Declaration’s promise meant something to them even when its fullest potential had not yet been realized.  They were all doing what the Declaration asked of them, and what it asks of all of us now. 

The authors of the Declaration did more than provide aspirational rhetoric.  Out of the fifty-six men who signed the Declaration, twenty-five were lawyers.  They built a legal case, complete with specific, documented, and cumulative examples demonstrating that the king had systematically violated the fundamental compact between the government and the governed.  They listed twenty-seven specific grievances that, when taken together, revealed a design to concentrate power in one person at the expense of the people and their representatives.  Our founders understood that the grievances they listed were legal indictments of a government that had broken faith with the people it was supposed to serve.  This year it is worth revisiting those grievances.  They are a framework provided precisely for when the American Dream is threatened.  Read them here. Then consider which of these twenty-seven grievances do you think are applicable today?  If you were to set out your own grievances, what would you identify?

This year, we celebrate the work of those who came before us.  We celebrate two hundred and fifty years of a republic that has bent towards the ideals of its founding.  We know we have a lot more work to do.  But we can celebrate an ideal that has proven more durable than any king, any administration, and any moment of crisis.  We are the successors to our founders.  The oath we took as lawyers is descended directly from the work our founders accomplished in Philadelphia in the summer of 1776.  They pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.  We pledged to support the Constitution to continue their work.  The pledge is a living commitment that we are called to honor continuously, to stave off kings and ensure that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.  These are the founding principles that contributed to every facet of our country’s success, and it is our duty to preserve them for the ensuing two hundred and fifty years.

The views expressed herein represent those of the authors and not necessarily those of the authors’ firms or their partners or employees.