LH0720 Jefferson and the Declaration

[Music] What happened in 1776, the Declaration of Independence that was at the center of the revolution of the colonies against the English crown? The Declaration was drafted by an intellectual which was very much learned in European law and European philosophy Thomas Jefferson. And you can read it because American Congress have realized that a very good website with the founding documents of American Constitution. So, let's take some key phrases from the Declaration. First of all, all men are created equal. Then, here there is a mention of divinity. There is an idea of God not as a Catholic or Protestant God, but a creator in general, a very abstract idea of divinity which is the same as saying the nature. They are endowed by their creator with certain analogous rights and among these rights, there are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This is a very famous phrase of the Declaration of Independence. So, Jefferson by drafting the Declaration of Independence uses very broadly diffused European legal concepts. But by using them, he adds something very important that these concepts are laid down in a document which is the justification of the existence of a political unity. I explained myself better. The Americans, the inhabitants of the 13th colonies, did not share a common history. They did not come from the same historical experience. They came from everywhere. They had different traditions. So, they couldn't be considered as a people in the sense of a folk, as the English considered themselves as they claimed to have a constitution and that this constitution could not be changed by the king himself. When the English Revolution stated a new constitution, it used ancient documents introducing a particular narrative to explain them and to transform singular documents like the Magna Carta into constitutional statements. So, what makes the identity of the English people was the common history of the nation. And what constituted the rights of every Englishman was the rights established by common law which was felt as a traditional custom which was more ancient than the conquest of the Norman in 2066. So, the British constitution is a very historical constitution and establishes an historical identity of the nation. And the rights of every individual as a part of the English nation is granted by the long history of the English custom. We know that this was not historically true but it was very well used before creating a historical constitution in English. The form of the American constitution is completely different because the constitution did not consider history as a mean of identity of the American people. On the contrary, the American people is unified only by the common beliefs which are drafted and laid down in a constitution. So, the constitution is the political identity of the Americans. In some sense, we can say that this is an identity over values, over shared values and not over a shared history and a shared experience. So, as the basis of it are natural rights, it is obvious that every power including the English king who oppresses these people sharing the same values. This power is to be considered as tyrannical and then unfit to be the ruler of a free people as Thomas Jefferson explains in the declaration. I added that recent studies on the culture of Thomas Jefferson has revealed that Jefferson knew and read the Treaty on tyranny written by Baitelus de Sasseferato in the 14th century. So, the definition of the tyrannical power of the king of England was well enruded in the European tradition until Baitelus de Sasseferato.