That’s nice to know, isn’t it…235 years after the fact.
Also, quite honestly, when you’ve got lawyers talking law, I half expected the decision to be that it wasn’t legal and that the United States still belongs to the British.
I ran across this article yesterday and have been thinking about it since then. You’ve got British barristers and American lawyers debating the legality of Declaration of Independence. If the United States had tried to win its freedom in the courts, we would probably still be tied up in appeals.
A couple of points hit me in this article:
It is assumed that the British were the rightful owners of the country when the Declaration of Independence was written. If the group had found the Declaration of Independence illegal, then there probably would have needed to be a follow-up debate over who gave the British the right to rule that pits the English barristers against the Native Americans.
I also think the debate ignored the basic rule of nature. An animal can claim whatever territory it wants, but if it’s not strong enough to hold it, then it doesn’t mean a thing. If the British had won the Revolutionary War and held onto their land claim, then the Declaration of Independence would have been deemed a treasonous document and our forefathers executed.
They knew this going into the situation as witnessed by the last line of the Declaration, “And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”
Read the article for yourself and see what you think. Here’s the article and here’s the text of the Declaration of Independence.