Justice Antonin Scalia once wrote, "If you want aspirations, you can read the Declaration of Independence," but "there is no such philosophizing in our Constitution," which is "a practical and pragmatic charter of government."

The proposition is that all persons are created equal in their possession of natural rights, to "secure" which — the Declaration's word — the government is instituted.

The drama of American democracy derives from the tension between the natural rights of the individual and the constructed right of the community to make such laws as the majority desires. Natural rights are affirmed by the Declaration; majority rule, circumscribed and modulated, is constructed by the Constitution and a properly engaged judiciary is duty-bound to declare majority acts invalid when they abridge natural rights.