[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 14608-14612]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




     OUR TWIN PILLARS OF FREEDOM: THE DECLARATION AND CONSTITUTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from California (Mr. Daniel E. Lungren) 
is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. DANIEL E. LUNGREN of California. Madam Speaker, we are in this 
Chamber just several days removed from our July 4th district work 
period, and I had reserved time on the Friday before our scheduled 
departure to discuss the importance of and the relevance of the birth 
date of this Nation. Since our session for that day was canceled, this 
is my first chance to speak on that subject.
  Nearby in the Capitol rotunda hang four paintings crafted from the 
hand of John Trumbull, one of George Washington's aides-de-camp during 
the Revolutionary War. In the first of them, members of the Second 
Continental Congress, now 232 years ago, signed their names to the 
Declaration of Independence, thereby formalizing a severance of the 
institutional bonds between the colonies and their mother country. Out 
of a ``decent respect for the opinions of mankind,'' they stated the 
reasons for this action in assiduous detail, invoking the ``laws of 
nature and of nature's God'' and the natural right of revolution 
because their inalienable natural rights had been abridged.
  Twelve years later, after a long, exhausting, but ultimately 
successful war for independence, the people of this country were 
debating in ratifying conventions up and down the eastern half of our 
now expansive land whether to ratify or reject a new governmental 
framework for our experiment in self-government. That document, our 
Constitution, which Akhil Amar, perhaps understating the case, has 
called ``one of the most important legal texts in human history,'' 
would ultimately be approved, and thus would commence the beginning of 
our new government.
  Today in the afterglow of the colorful commemoration of our national 
independence--and I might say I was fortunate enough to enjoy the 
fireworks at Kings Beach, California, and Incline Village, Nevada, as 
well as the city of Folsom Rodeo this past weekend--I rise to celebrate 
our twin pillars of freedom, the Declaration of Independence and the 
Constitution.

                              {time}  1915

  Madam Speaker, they are much more than dry pieces of parchment from 
centuries bygone. No. They are documents which embody the very notion 
of our independence, recognizing our unique quality of self-government 
and cementing our commitment to constitutionalism. Make no mistake, 
this was something much more than just and efficacious for mankind than 
that which had come before. Yes, we have much to celebrate.
  Madam Speaker, these celebratory facts were not foreordained. As 
Carol Berkin has written, 1786, ``was the 10th anniversary of the 
Declaration of Independence and the third year of life in a new Nation, 
but political leaders everywhere feared there was little cause to 
celebrate. Dark clouds and a suffocating gloom seemed to have settled 
over the country, and these men understood that something had gone 
terribly wrong.
  ``From Virginia, George Washington lamented the steady stream of 
diplomatic humiliations suffered by the young Republic. Fellow 
Virginian, James Madison, talked gravely of mortal diseases afflicting 
the confederacy. In New Jersey, William Livingston confided to a friend 
his doubt that the Republic could survive another decade. From 
Massachusetts, the bookseller-turned revolutionary strategist, Henry 
Knox, declared, `Our present Federal Government is a name, a shadow 
without power or effect.' Feisty, outspoken John Adams, serving as 
America's minister to Great Britain, observed his Nation's 
circumstances with more than his usual pessimism. The United States, he 
declared, was doing more harm to itself than the British Army had ever 
done. Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Monroe, Robert Morris, in 
short, many from every State, agreed that a serious crisis had settled 
upon the Nation. The question was: Could they do anything to save their 
country?''
  The answer that came forth was a thunderous yes. They did do 
something to save their country. Our Constitution was the fruition of 4 
long, hot months of deliberation in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
  On September 15, 1787, delegates there finalized a text, and 13 days 
later Congress, then meeting in New York, voted unanimously to send the 
proposed Constitution to the people of each State for ratification.
  Madam Speaker, the framers of our Constitution articulated a new 
science of politics. It had been believed that republics were only 
feasible as small homogenous clusters and were most likely destined to 
fail, since Democratic governance could lead to the tyranny of the 
majority or demagogic usurpation of people's consent, sovereignty 
rights, and freedoms.
  And so this new, unproven republican design was put before the people 
through the instrument of ratification. James Madison, the Father of 
the Constitution, said that without ratification, the Constitution was 
like a dead letter. In fact, life and validity were breathed into it by 
the voice of the people, speaking through several State conventions.
  Contrary to contrary expectations in the 21st century, popular 
ratification was a novel idea. Underscoring the boldness of their 
venture, several

[[Page 14609]]

States even made their voting qualifications more inclusive than before 
so that more could partake in the ratification process.
  And what a rich process it was. Brutus, Publius, Anti-federalists, 
Federalists. The debates over ratification still enlighten, inform, and 
reminds us of the seriousness with which we take our political system 
and the principles embedded within it.
  So it's important for us to remember just a week after this grand 
Fourth that our history included framers, signers, and ratifiers, and 
as always, then as now, there were also those of us, merely we, the 
people.
  As Alexander Hamilton wrote to the voters of New York in Federalist 
Paper No. 1, ``After an unequivocal experience of the inefficacy of the 
subsisting Federal Government, you are called upon to deliberate on a 
new Constitution for the United States of America. The subject speaks 
its own importance. It has been frequently remarked that it seems to 
have been reserved to the people of this country by their conduct and 
example to decide the important question, whether societies of men are 
really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection 
and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their 
political constitutions on accident and force.
  If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we arrived 
may, with propriety, be regarded as the era in which that decision is 
to be made, and a wrong election of the part, we shall act may, in this 
view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.''
  Thankfully, many agreed with Hamilton, and our Constitution is still 
intact today, 220 years later. In the intervening years, much has been 
written about how to appropriately interpret our Constitution. What do 
its clauses mean; what do its phrases imply; what is the scope of this 
or that respective enumerated or unenumerated power? How are we to 
approach or understand issues today that were unforeseen in 1787 or 
1788?
  Madam Speaker, I believe the constitutional interpretation should be 
a principled process, moored and anchored in the text, ascending up 
from the text, meaning context, and history of the words, phrases, 
concepts and structures of the Constitution itself, not a deductive 
process says that begins by asking, as one former Justice, according to 
one of his former law clerks, used to ask, What is the just result, and 
working backward from the answer to that question to see how it would 
comport with relevant theory or precedent.
  I am for ultimate justice, Madam Speaker. But such an untethered 
interpretative technique is neither just nor fair to the individuals in 
specific cases. Justice implies measurement by some objective standard 
in an appropriate and specified context, not in a free-ranging 
philosophy seminar that only tangentially touches upon the context for 
this particular discussion that is the Constitution of the United 
States.
  Akhil Amar is right, ``A careful examination of constitutional text, 
history, and structure will often leave us with a clear answer. At 
other times, however, the most the document can yield is the right set 
of questions to ask ourselves.'' But this is no deficiency. As we all 
know, asking the right question is the first and most important step 
towards appropriate adjudication and resolution.
  Now some have argued through our history that the Constitution is 
outdated and irrelevant to our contrary circumstances and lives. 
Outdated, irrelevant? How could it be, and what does that mean? For it 
to be outdated we'd have to ignore Chief Justice John Marshall's words 
when he said that, ``We must never forget it is a Constitution we are 
expounding.'' Why would he exhort us to elucidate something outdated 
and irrelevant?
  One prominent Justice once said that Justices should adjudicate 
according to the felt necessities of the time. This is contrary to the 
thoughts of John Story, who wrote in his famous Commentaries that the 
Constitution has, ``a fixed, uniform, and permanent construction.'' To 
measure the felt necessities of the time is an impossible task. Whose 
necessities are to be felt; how are such feelings to be measured, is 
this the proper role of the judiciary, even if it were possible?
  As Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 78, the judicial branch was to 
have neither force nor will. In Osborne versus Bank of the United 
States, Justice Marshall said that the judicial department has no will 
in any case. Judicial power is never exercised for the purpose of 
giving effect to the will of the judge, always for the purpose of 
giving effect to the will of the legislature or, in other words, to the 
will of the law. Judicial power, as contradistinguished from the power 
of law, has no existence. Courts are mere instruments of the law, and 
can will nothing.''
  Again, Story reminds us that the judge ought not to enlarge the 
construction of a given power beyond its fair scope of its terms merely 
because the restriction is inconvenient in politic or even mischievous. 
Since the Government of the United States is one of limited and 
enumerated powers, a departure from the true import and sense of its 
power is pro tanto in the establishment of a new constitution. It is 
doing for the people what they have not chosen to do for themselves. It 
is usurping the functions of a legislator and deserting those of an 
expounder of the law.''
  In another case, Justice Marshall wrote, ``to say that the intention 
of the instrument must prevail; that this intention must be collected 
from its words; that its words to be understood in that sense in which 
they are generally used by those for whom the instrument was intended; 
that its provisions are neither to be restricted into insignificance, 
nor extended to objects not comprehended in them, nor contemplated by 
its framers; is to repeat what has already been said more at large and 
is all that can be necessary.''
  Thus, the Constitution endeavors to draw the broad strokes of 
principle and dimension, not to articulate each and every iota of 
detail which may arise from the entire future of American history. In 
McCulloch versus Maryland, Chief Justice Marshall tells us, ``A 
constitution, to contain an accurate detail of all the subdivisions of 
which its great powers will admit, and of all the means by which they 
may be carried into execution, would partake of the prolixity of a 
legal code, and can scarcely be embraced by the human mind. It would, 
probably, never be understood by the public. Its nature therefore 
requires that only its great outlines should be marked, its important 
objects designated, and the minor ingredients which compose those 
limits be deduced from the nature ate of the objects themselves.
  ``That this idea was entertained by the Framers of the American 
Constitution is not only to be inferred from the nature of the 
instrument, but from the language. Why else were some of the 
limitations found in the ninth section of the first article introduced?
  ``It is also, in some degree, warranted by their having omitted to 
use any restrictive term which might prevent its receiving a fair and 
just interpretation. In considering this question, then, we must never 
forget that it is a Constitution we are expounding.''
  In the Dartmouth College case, Marshall explained that, ``although a 
particular and rare case may not in itself be of sufficient magnitude 
to induce a rule, yet it must be governed by the rule when established 
unless some plain and strong reason for excluding it can be given. It 
is not enough to say that this particular case was not the mind of the 
convention when the article was framed, nor the American people when it 
was adopted. The case, being within the words of the rule, must be 
within its operation likewise.''
  In contrast to those who believe that the Constitution is nothing but 
a set of policies which enjoy popular acceptance at the time of 
ratification, followed by judicial interpretation in light of the 
conditions and opinions of later years, I would agree with the esteemed 
judge and scholar, Michael McConnell, who has written that, 
``constitutional language is an embodiment of legal principles; it is 
necessary to understand those principles in order to understand the 
Constitution.'' It would

[[Page 14610]]

be most unwise to separate and detach all interpretive ties to the text 
and context of the actual document as well as to the structure and 
concepts with it because, Madam Speaker, once that is done, we now 
would be playing a deductive game of polling and power based on the 
momentary whims of the people and the magnified moods of missionary-
minded judges.
  Constitutional jurisprudence must be more than the inevitable 
byproduct of different political and social milieus. In the traditional 
enterprise of constitutional law, the meaning of the Constitution is 
seen to be a legitimate question for historical interpretive inquiry. I 
would argue this should not change.
  Madam Speaker, our Declaration and Constitution are worth celebrating 
here tonight because of the unique framework they give us to govern 
ourselves to prosper by offering ourselves economically, socially, and 
societally according to the rule of law and to attempt to discern the 
common good. It also allows individual citizens and communities the 
capacity and volition to decide for themselves whether to shrink from 
or rise to doing their duty as citizens and individuals, since 
republicanism empowers the people.
  So this is our challenge. As de Tocqueville said, ``in Democratic 
times especially, the true friends of freedom and human greatness must 
be on guard because an inordinate amount of individualism can lead to 
self-seclusion, fear, and temerity.

                              {time}  1930

  But it doesn't have to be this way. As Harvey Mansfield has reminded 
us, our constitutional system allows for democratic greatness to appear 
in individuals with extraordinary knowledge, vision and ability, but 
such individuals are always constrained by constitutional boundaries.
  More importantly, since our system recognizes the fallibility of our 
human nature, it does not depend on honor and virtue being constantly 
present in the executive or in positions of legislative or judicial 
leadership. Thankfully, our constitutional system allows for ideas and 
societal passions to be filtered through the vortex of time, 
transparency and deliberation.
  As Federalist No. 10 says, ``As long as the reason of man continues 
fallible and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will 
be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and 
his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal 
influence on each other and the former will be objects to which the 
latter will attach themselves. The diversity in the faculties of men 
from which the rights of property originate is not less an insuperable 
obstacle to the uniformity of interests. The protection of these 
faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of 
different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession 
of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and 
from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the 
respective proprietors ensues a division of the society into different 
interests and parties.''
  And then he says something very interesting. ``The latent causes of 
faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere 
brought into different degrees of activity according to the different 
circumstances of civil society. It is in vain to say that enlightened 
statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests and render 
them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not 
always be at the helm. Nor, in many cases can such an adjustment be 
made at all without taking into view indirect and remote 
considerations, which will rarely prevail over the immediate interests 
which one party may find in disregarding the rights of another or the 
good of the whole.''
  So, Madam Speaker, given the potential for evil intrinsic within 
human nature, our framers were wise not to give man too much credit, 
but not so pessimistic as to regulate themselves to fatalistic 
hopelessness.
  Our system of checks, balances and federalism allows for the refining 
and enlarging of public views. As Madison writes in Federalist 55, ``As 
there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain 
degree of circumspection and distrust, so there are other qualities in 
human nature which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. 
Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a 
higher degree than any other form. Were the pictures which have been 
drawn by the political jealousy of some among us faithful likenesses of 
the human character, the inference would be that there is not 
sufficient virtue among men for self-government; and that nothing less 
than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and 
devouring one another.''
  Madam Speaker, the history of the past 220 years teaches us that we 
do not need the chains of despotism to restrain ourselves from self-
mutilation. Our Constitution has served and continues to serve us well 
in times of intense societal debate and in times of relative calm.
  Herman Belz has written that ``the framers intended the Constitution 
as a permanent instrument of government for the American people and 
that instrument has proven to be quite remarkable.''
  Several years ago, a former Associate Justice of our Supreme Court 
said that ``the Union survived the Civil War, the Constitution did not. 
In its place arose a new, more promising basis for justice and 
equality, the 14th amendment.''
  I would humbly disagree with that assessment. The Constitution is the 
Constitution because of its amendability, whereby it allowed for just 
such a development as the 14th amendment to take place, fulfilling its 
original purpose, that is, to devise a system of government 
presupposing the equality of persons under the law.
  One current Justice has recently said that ``the Constitution evolves 
and should reflect changes in society; that going back to what was 
meant originally when they wrote, for instance, `We the People' makes 
little sense.''
  I disagree. It does make sense. ``We the People'' did institute this 
government, or else under what court and government does the Justice 
now serve, since this government is the one constituted in 1789 and in 
continuation to this day? Thankfully, we, unlike any other government 
then established on earth, set up a constitutional framework that 
allowed for changes to be made according to the orderly deliberation of 
society through representation and the legitimacy of the legislative 
process.
  Let us not forget, as Akhil Amar has said, that ``the framers 
themselves also were, after all, revolutionaries who risked their 
lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to replace an Old World 
monarchy with a New World order unprecedented in its commitment to 
popular self-government. Later generations of reformers repeatedly 
amended the Constitution so as to extend its liberal foundations, 
dramatically expanding liberty and equality.''
  Thankfully, throughout our history we have had leaders and statesmen 
who were committed to constitutionalism and not to power and might. 
After all, as Lincoln said in his first inaugural, ``If, by the mere 
force of numbers, a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly 
written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, 
justify revolution.''
  As Federalist 71 stated, ``The Republican principle demands that the 
deliberate sense of the community should govern the conduct of those to 
whom they entrust the management of their affairs, but it does not 
require an unqualified complacence to every sudden breeze of passion or 
to every transient impulse which the people may receive.''
  Madam Speaker, none of us has the right to oppress minorities, let 
majorities rule tyrannically or turn the Constitution into a grab bag 
of personal policy preferences and arbitrary power grabs. We all have a 
responsibility to study the Constitution and attempt to humbly 
delineate the contours of confluence between constitutional principle 
and our contemporary realities to which it has applied.
  Each of us has a duty to do this. After all, each member of the three 
representative branches takes an oath

[[Page 14611]]

to ``support and defend,'' or to ``preserve, protect and defend'' the 
Constitution of the United States. We must take those oaths seriously. 
We must take the 9th amendment seriously, which states, ``The 
enumeration of the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be 
construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.''
  We must take the 10th amendment seriously, which states, ``The powers 
not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited 
by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the 
people.''
  These are important clauses and should not be forgotten, lest we 
forget the accumulation instead of the dispersion of power is the very 
reason we sought our independence, unless we assume self-government is 
free, easy, and passively perpetual.
  And in this regard, I would refer to Alexander Hamilton's words in 
the Federalist Papers No. 78, where he described his vision of the 
judiciary as one of the three major branches. And these are his words: 
``Whoever attentively considers the different departments of power,'' 
they referred to the branches as ``departments,'' ``whoever attentively 
considers the different departments of power, must perceive that in a 
government in which they are separated from each other the judiciary, 
from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to 
the political rights of the Constitution.''
  He goes on to say, ``It proves incontestably that the judiciary is 
beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power, that 
it can never attack with success either of the other two, and that all 
possible care is requisite to enable it to defend itself against 
attack.''
  But then he goes on to make an interesting point that is often lost. 
He says, ``As liberty can have nothing to fear from the judiciary 
alone, but would have everything to fear from its union with either of 
the other departments.''
  What he is saying in current vernacular is that if the judiciary ever 
trespasses on the proper powers of the other two branches, it will 
become the most dangerous. He is suggesting that in the area of the 
activity of the democratic branches of government, that is those who 
are elected by the people and most readily subject to their action, the 
executive, and particularly the legislative, that if any of their power 
is encumbered, encroached, trespassed upon or poached by the judiciary, 
it would become, rather than the weakest, the most dangerous branch of 
government.
  That is why I would suggest that we ought to look at the words of 
Chief Justice Roberts when he was up for his confirmation hearings in 
the Senate. When asked what his philosophy was, among other things he 
said, ``One of judicial modesty.'' I have often used the word 
``judicial humility,'' and what I mean by that is a recognition of the 
limitations of the expanse of their power.
  Judge Andrew Kleinfeld of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in his 
dissent in Compassion in Dying v. State of Washington case in 1996 said 
these words: ``That a question is important does not imply that it is 
constitutional. The Founding Fathers did not establish the United 
States as a democratic republic so that elected officials would decide 
trivia while all great questions would be decided by the judiciary. 
That an issue is important does not mean that the people through their 
democratically elected representatives do not have the power to decide 
it. One might suppose that the general rule in a democratic republic 
would be the opposite, with a few exceptions.''
  One of the proper understandings of the Constitution, Madam Speaker, 
is that there are limitations for all three branches of government, 
including the judiciary, and that the judiciary, if it makes a mistake 
of reaching beyond what its role ought to be, destroys the intrinsic 
value and purpose of the other two.
  To put it another way, Justice Scalia said a number of years ago in a 
speech, he said when he was a kid growing up and you saw something that 
you didn't like or you thought that was wrong, your response was there 
ought to be a law. But he says, today if you see something you don't 
like or something you think is wrong, your response is, it is 
unconstitutional.
  Now, those are just a few words changed in your response. Your 
emotional response to the situation is the same, maybe even your 
intellectual response to the substance is the same, but your response 
in terms of the manner by which you address the problem is so different 
that it radically changes the substance as well as the environment.
  What do I mean by that? When an issue is determined to be 
constitutional, it becomes ultimately the final decisionmaking arena of 
the courts. It is taken out of the hands of the democratic branches, 
because the democratic branches cannot, unless they enact a formal 
amendment to the Constitution, cannot do anything to overturn that 
decision by the court.
  So if we define every important issue as a constitutional issue, we 
are rendering impotent to a degree both the executive, but, more 
importantly in my judgment, Madam Speaker, the legislative branch, and 
particularly the House of Representatives.

                              {time}  1945

  So as we should understand the reach and limits of our branch, as the 
executive branch should understand the reach and limitations of their 
branch, so ought the judicial branch.
  Madam Speaker, today, because of the Declaration and the 
Constitution, we do not live under the perverted political thumb of the 
divine right of kings, under the specter of religious persecution and 
bloody religious wars, under monarchy, or feudalism. For that we are 
thankful.
  We are not a blood and soil Nation. We are a propositional Nation, 
committed to the equal natural rights of all citizens to life, to 
liberty, to the pursuit of happiness, not to the immediate satisfaction 
of momentary appetites. We are a Constitutional system in a 
multifaceted society that guards against the twin evils that may be 
found in popular democratic government: Majority tyranny on the one 
hand, and demagoguery on the other. Our mediating institutions, whether 
they are families, whether they are churches, and our voluntary 
associations are so important because they temper our unrestrained 
passions.
  Madam Speaker, the Declaration and Constitution can edify and teach 
Americans about our history as a people. Ours is a history that 
includes millions of honorable citizens and numerous men and women of 
extraordinary contribution:
  Men like Roger Sherman, who was one of only two men who signed the 
Declaration, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution. He 
was a delegate to the first and second Continental Congresses. He was a 
member of the five-man committee formed to draft the Declaration of 
Independence, and a member of the Committee of Thirteen formed to 
comprise the Articles of Confederation. At the Constitutional 
Convention in 1787, he actually delivered more speeches than all but 
three others. He was instrumental in the Great Compromise, was a Member 
of the first U.S. House of Representatives, later served in the Senate, 
where he played important roles in the debate over the Bill of Rights 
and the national bank.
  Or men like John Dickinson, a Quaker from Delaware and Pennsylvania 
who served both States as the elected chief executive. Dickinson wrote 
the instrumental Letters From a Farmer in Pennsylvania, which 
circulated in 1767 and 1768; was a delegate to the Stamp Act Congress 
in October of 1765, where he drafted the Declaration of Rights and 
Grievances. A member of the first and second Continental Congresses, 
Dickinson was a principal draftsman of the Declaration of the Causes 
and Necessity of Taking Up Arms issued in July 1775, and one of 
Delaware's delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
  Or, finally, men like James Wilson, who made more speeches than 
anyone at the Constitutional Convention, than Governor Morris, served 
on the Supreme Court and articulated so eloquently the principles of 
natural rights

[[Page 14612]]

our Declaration and Constitution were meant to protect.
  Madam Speaker, a few years ago, the esteemed historian Bernard Bailyn 
wrote a short series of essays which he entitled To Begin the World 
Anew. Taking his title from the hopes and pens of Thomas Paine, in this 
splendid and fascinating collection of essays he explained how the 
Founders, including those just like the ones I mentioned, were 
provincial, they were isolated, they were unaristocratic; yet their 
perseverance, imagination, and vision were not inhibited, leading to 
what Carol Berkin has called, ``A brilliant solution: Our 
Constitution.'' Indeed, it was and is.
  Several years ago, it was written that, ``At the dawn of a new 
millennium, constitutional law is at risk of losing touch with the 
Constitution itself. A dense doctrinal grid threatens to obscure the 
document with generally unfortunate consequences. The Constitution is 
wiser than the Court. The document will outlast many of today's 
doctrines, and it provides a stable fulcrum from which to criticize 
some of the Court's less admirable adventures.''
  Let this always be the case. For as John Ely has written, ``Though 
the identification of a constitutional connection is only the beginning 
of analysis, it is a necessary beginning. The Court is under an 
obligation to trace its premises to the charter from which it derived 
its authority. It should do this for many reasons, none other than the 
fact that what the American people have said and done in the 
Constitution is often more edifying, inspiring, and sensible than what 
the justices have said and done in the case law.''
  Madam Speaker, today our Declaration and Constitution should be 
celebrated, not as mere icons or cultural symbols that immature 
societies need to give them cultural and simplistic cohesion. No, the 
Declaration and the Constitution should be celebrated for what they 
really are, demarcations of our commitments as a people to as wise a 
system as possible, given our human fallibility of government here on 
Earth.
  I happen to agree with a current Member of the Senate who said, ``I 
have a deep-seated belief that America is unique, strong and great, 
because of a commitment to personal freedom, in our economic system and 
our politics. We are a free people who consented to be governed, not 
vice versa.''
  I would also agree with the aspiration of Justice John Marshall 
Harlan, who wrote, ``In the view of the Constitution, in the eye of the 
law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of 
citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is colorblind, and 
neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil 
rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer 
of the most powerful. The law regards man as man and takes no account 
of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed 
by the supreme law of the land are involved.''
  Madam Speaker, 1776 was not a year free of bloodshed and hardship. It 
was anything but. We are now over 22 decades removed from those events, 
22 decades which have seen our great country grow, prosper, suffer, 
mourn, rejoice, exalt, and contemplate while our lives and the lives 
around us were changed by technological, political, international, and 
societal change.
  We today honor those who sacrificed on the fields and hills of 
Lexington, Concord, Breed's Hill, Princeton, Saratoga, and Yorktown. We 
honor all those who sweated, debated, argued, thought, reasoned, wrote, 
and ratified the document by which we all do our collective best and 
our collective business here in Congress, in the White House, in the 
Supreme Court, and in this great country and society full of families, 
communities, localities, counties, and States.
  So let our twin pillars always guide, always steer, and always stay 
firm, tall, and strong as we continue to humbly exist as one of the 
many on this earth, yet one incomparable as to the rest. The 
Declaration and the Constitution, let us always declare, and let us 
continue to constitute our experiment in republican self-government in 
such a way that we pay due deference to those who have come before, and 
make proud those who will come after.
  Happy birthday, United States of America.

                          ____________________