At her confirmation hearing, Elena Kagan pointedly refused to embrace the principle of the Declaration of Independence that human beings possess inalienable rights. In a piece (online only?) for the Wall Street Journal, Stephen Breyer oddly recasts the Declaration’s bold pronouncement that “We hold these truths to be self-evident ….” Breyer, carefully avoiding the word “truths,” reduces this foundational proposition to a historical description of what Jefferson said “we Americans thought … ‘self-evident.’”
Breyer’s piece—another version of his vapid book-promoting op-ed from September—argues that “It is vital that [the Supreme Court] meet the legal challenges that [global] interdependence creates for the sake of our nation’s defining experiment.” I’d have much more confidence in the Court’s ability to carry out that role if Breyer and his progressive colleagues displayed an actual belief in our founding principles. (What role, if any, the Declaration ought to play in constitutional interpretation is a separate question.)