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Beau Breslin

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    Judicial

    Why the Founders would be aghast at the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling

    Beau Breslin
    June 28, 2022
    Founding Father John Dickinson

    "[John] Dickinson recognized that a constitution is divine; it is a sacred text. But it also evolves," writes Breslin

    commons.wikimedia.org

    Breslin, author of "A Constitution for the Living: Imagining How Five Generations of Americans Would Rewrite the Nation's Fundamental Law," holds the Joseph C. Palamountain Jr. Chair in Government at Skidmore College.

    The Founding generation would be astonished by the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling. Not because constitutional framers like James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin gave much thought to a woman’s decision to terminate her pregnancy. Let’s be honest, they didn’t. No, the revolutionary and visionary men who birthed a nation and designed the country’s federal constitution would be astounded by the high court’s impudent decision because it violated the very principle they fought so hard for – the principle that expanding liberty was the ultimate aim of a righteous polity.

    The American Revolution was fought to expand liberty. Thousands of colonists perished on the battlefields of Saratoga, Breed’s Hill, Trenton, Lexington and Concord precisely in order to reclaim those rights that the British Crown had withheld. Those courageous individuals recognized that they were fighting to expand a conception of liberty that King George III so cavalierly disregarded. Indeed, the Declaration of Independence was penned by Thomas Jefferson and signed by 56 patriots so as to magnify the “unalienable” rights that the “Creator” had “endowed.” Governments, Jefferson wrote, “are instituted among men” to “secure these rights;” it was inconceivable to think otherwise.

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    John Dickinson, one of America’s most underappreciated Founders, even drafted an early version of the Articles of Confederation in which he emphasized the significance of extending personal freedom. As a Quaker, Dickinson recognized that a Constitution is divine; it is a sacred text. But it also evolves. And the arc of that evolution, he insisted, must point towards greater freedom – the extension of rights, not the retraction of them. His sentiments resonated with an entire generation. Most newly independent Americans embraced that bedrock principle.

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    Leveraging big ideas

    A call for Gen Z to rewrite the Constitution

    Beau Breslin
    November 05, 2021
    Social media icons

    A generation raised on social media and with far different priorities would write a vastly different Constitution than any of its predecessors.

    Chesnot/Getty Images
    Breslin, author of "A Constitution for the Living: Imagining How Five Generations of Americans Would Rewrite the Nation's Fundamental Law," holds the Joseph C. Palamountain Jr. Chair in Government at Skidmore College.
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