In an article for Anchoring Truths, JWI Fellow Alumnus Phil Williamson offers some thoughts on the debate between JWI Founder and Director Hadley Arkes and Toledo Law School Professor Lee Strang. The debate, which focused on the Declaration of Independence's role in constitutional interpretation, was hosted by the Federalist Society. Williamson points out that, contra Strang, the Declaration is the constitutive document of the American regime, and that the Constitution can not undermine those principles, especially the Natural Law principles laid out: that all men are created equal, and that government's legitimacy is derived from the consent of the governed. Only the force of the positive law, Williamson notes, could permit what was opposed to the Natural Law.

Some excerpts from the piece:

"The fundamentally equal, rights-bearing nature of human beings creates two important boundaries for government. First, the government’s duty is to secure those inalienable rights that all men possess by nature. It can neither grant nor rescind them, since they derive from the Creator and the very nature of human beings. Second, a good government—a “just government”—can rule only by the consent of the governed. Why? Because all men are equal, so one man (or group of men) cannot justly claim to rule over his equals without their consent. If instead some humans were simply ordained by nature to rule others, then not all humans are equal. Put another way: human beings are not made equal by the force of positive law; their prior equality is what makes the positive law possible in the first place."

"In Washington v. Glucksberg, where plaintiffs tried to find a Due Process right to physician-assisted suicide, Chief Justice Rehnquist observed that Due Process protects only those rights “deeply rooted in our nation’s history” and “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.” Which is to say that to dragoon another into helping you kill yourself is a right that can only exist—if it may exist at all—as a creature of the positive law. It cannot be willed into existence from the shadows of Due Process."

View the full article at Anchoring Truths here.