The Declaration of Independence, reloaded

When you've spent as many hours unpacking the text of the nation's founding documents as we have, you start to notice how many concerns that were pressing when the United States was founded remain unresolved today. This is obvious with the U.S. Constitution, most of whose clauses — even, we discovered, the relatively unsung 3rd Amendment — have come up for judicial workouts within living memory.

July 4, 2008