"The founding fathers were bold and imaginative rebels with a cause.
250 years ago, or as we say in the United Kingdom, just the other day,
they declared independence by balancing contending forces and drawing strength in diversity.
They're united 13 disparate colonies to forge a nation on the revolutionary idea of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
They carried with them and carried forward the great inheritance of the British Enlightenment. as well as the ideals which had an even deeper history in English common law and Magna Carta.
These roots run deep, and they are still vital.
Our Declaration of Rights of 1689 was not only the foundation of our constitutional monarchy. but also provided a source of so many
of the principles reiterated, often verbatim in the American Bill
of Rights of 1791.
And those rights go even farther back in history. The US Supreme Court historical Society has calculated that Magna Carta is cited in at least
160 supreme Court cases since 1789.
Not least as the foundation of the principle that executive power is subject to checks and balances."
