Note: The following text is a transcription of the Stone Engraving of the parchment Declaration of Independence the document on display in the Rotunda at the National Archives Museum. The spelling and punctuation reflects the original. The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.
To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
More specifically, procedural justice refers to the following: the fairness of how information is gathered the fairness of how decisions are made. Procedural justice does not refer to the fairness of decisions themselves. That is a matter of either distributive or corrective justice.
The goals of procedural justice are the following: to increase the chances that all information necessary for making wise and just decisions is gathered to ensure the wise and just use of information in the making of decisions to protect the right to privacy, human dignity, freedom, and other important values and interests such as distributive and corrective justice to promote efficiency. Scholars and others who have studied procedural justice often claim that it is the keystone of liberty or the heart of the law.
Observers of world affairs have sometimes claimed that the degree of procedural justice present in a country is a good indicator of the degree of freedom, respect for human rights, and other basic rights in that country.
A lack of procedural justice is often considered an indication of an authoritarian or totalitarian political system. Respect for procedural justice is often a key indicator of a democratic political system. Phrases in the Constitution designed to promote procedural justice include:. Article I, Section 9. No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed. Article III, Section 3.
The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed.
Amendment V. No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Amendment VI. In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
Amendment VII. In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
Corrective justice. Corrective justice concerns the fairness of responses to wrongs or injuries suffered by a person or group.
Fair responses to wrongs and injuries may vary widely. In some instances, one may ignore what has happened, forgive the person causing the wrong or injury, or use the situation to educate the person to prevent a repetition of the event. In other situations, one might wish to require a person to compensate in one way or another for a wrong or injury done to others.
In some instances, courts of law may punish wrongdoers by fines, imprisonment, or even death. Corrective justice has one principal goal: the fair correction of a wrong or injury.
In addition, we may want to prevent or discourage future wrongful or careless conduct by teaching a lesson to the wrongdoer or making an example of him or her. Thus, the purposes or goals of corrective justice are the following:. Correction, prevention, and deterrence are essential to the very existence of society. Without efforts to serve these goals, disorder and chaos may result. Ensuring fair responses to wrongs and injuries is important not only with regard to criminal behavior and civil matters but also in families, schools, and other areas of the private sector.
Phrases in the Constitution that are designed to promote corrective justice include:. Amendment VIII. Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. Today, laws enacted by Congress that promote domestic tranquility include those dealing with terrorism, providing government the capacity to enforce the laws and keep the peace, providing for national security, providing for and protecting peaceful assemblies and demonstrations, and providing citizens with peaceful means of attempting to monitor the actions of their government and air their grievances.
Tranquility for the Framers meant the absence of riots, rebellions, and similar symptoms of social disorder. They were greatly concerned with domestic tranquility because social disorder had become an increasingly fearful, dangerous, and common state of affairs in the new states.
It threatened the political stability of the country, which had a weak central government that could not control the conflicts that were taking place in the states.
Economic turmoil and violence in post-Revolutionary America, — Social disorder after the Revolutionary War was caused mainly by economic conflict between farmers and merchants. During the Revolution, farmers borrowed money to meet the demand for food for domestic and foreign armed forces, along with civilian demand.
At the end of the war, farmers could no longer sell as much of their produce as before. But the people who had loaned them money demanded that they pay back the loans. At the same time, state governments demanded high property taxes from farmers to pay off debt caused by fighting the British. Those unable to pay their debts were imprisoned.
High inflation made matters worse for the newly free states. Framers demand redress of grievances. The fight for freedom from British oppression seemed to have been futile to the farmers and others being bankrupted and imprisoned.
Some decided to burn down courthouses since records of private debts and public taxes were held there. By the mids, acts of violence protesting these conditions had become commonplace.
One demand of the people in debt was that states issue paper currency for payment of debts, since there was an acute shortage of gold and silver coins. In Exeter, New Hampshire, in September , farmers surrounded the state legislature and demanded that debt be canceled and paper currency issued.
Elsewhere for example, in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Vermont, and Virginia , farmers burned down courthouses. Inadequate government response to disorder. Most of these riotous uprisings were sooner or later defeated. The lack of a sufficiently powerful central government was apparent to leaders such as George Washington and James Madison. As the Annapolis Convention met, the most serious of these disorders had hardly begun. The conflict pitted over-taxed farmers against wealthy merchant Loyalists, whose property had been restored after the Revolution.
This extensive, sometimes bloody conflict convinced state leaders that the Articles of Confederation must be amended. With popular rebellion seemingly out of control, the case for revising the Articles of Confederation was greatly strengthened. The result was the Philadelphia Convention that opened in May, resulting in the creation of a new Constitution that greatly increased the powers of the federal government.
In other words, the fundamental freedoms of the American people were alluded to in the Declaration of Independence, implicit in the Constitution, and enumerated in the Bill of Rights. When the Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia in , it was far from clear that the delegates would pass a resolution to separate from Great Britain. To persuade them, someone needed to articulate why the Americans were breaking away.
Although Jefferson disputed his account, John Adams later recalled that he had persuaded Jefferson to write the draft because Jefferson had the fewest enemies in Congress and was the best writer.
Jefferson would have gotten the job anyway—he was elected chair of the committee. Jefferson had 17 days to produce the document and reportedly wrote a draft in a day or two. The Declaration of Independence has three parts. It has a preamble, which later became the most famous part of the document but at the time was largely ignored.
The preamble to the Declaration of Independence contains the entire theory of American government in a single, inspiring passage:. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
When Jefferson wrote the preamble, it was largely an afterthought. Why is it so important today? It captured perfectly the essence of the ideals that would eventually define the United States. How could Jefferson write this at a time that he and other Founders who signed the Declaration owned slaves?
The document was an expression of an ideal. In his personal conduct, Jefferson violated it. At the Seneca Falls Convention in , when supporters of gaining greater rights for women met, they, too, used the Declaration of Independence as a guide for drafting their Declaration of Sentiments. Their efforts to achieve equal suffrage culminated in in the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote.
And during the civil rights movement in the s, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This note was a promise that all men—yes, black men as well as white men—would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Like the other Founders, he was steeped in the political philosophy of the Enlightenment, in philosophers such as John Locke, Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, Francis Hutcheson, and Montesquieu.
All of them believed that people have certain unalienable and inherent rights that come from God, not government, or come simply from being human. They also believed that when people form governments, they give those governments control over certain natural rights to ensure the safety and security of other rights.
Jefferson, George Mason, and the other Founders frequently spoke of the same set of rights as being natural and unalienable. As members of the Continental Congress contemplated independence in May and June of , many colonies were dissolving their charters with England. As the actual vote on independence approached, a few colonies were issuing their own declarations of independence and bills of rights.
When Jefferson wrote his famous preamble, he was restating, in more eloquent language, the philosophy of natural rights expressed in the Virginia Declaration that the Founders embraced. The Declaration of Independence was a propaganda document rather than a legal one.
It was an advertisement about why the colonists were breaking away from England. What is the relationship between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution? In the years between and , most of the 13 states drafted constitutions that contained a declaration of rights within the body of the document or as a separate provision at the beginning, many of them listing the same natural rights that Jefferson had embraced in the Declaration.
When it came time to form a central government in , the Continental Congress began to create a weak union governed by the Articles of Confederation.
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