University of Richmond Law Review Volume 32 | Issue 1 Article 4 1998 The eclD aration of Independence in Constitutional Interpretation: A Selective History and Analysis Charles H. Cosgrove Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.richmond.edu/lawreview Part of the Constitutional Law Commons, and the Legal History Commons Recommended Citation Charles H. Cosgrove, The Declaration of Independence in Constitutional Interpretation: A Selective History and Analysis, 32 U. Rich. L. Rev. 107 (1998). Available at: http://scholarship.richmond.edu/lawreview/vol32/iss1/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law School Journals at UR Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in University of Richmond Law Review by an authorized editor of UR Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE IN CONSTITU- TIONAL INTERPRETATION: A SELECTIVE HISTORY AND ANALYSIS Charles H. Cosgrove* ... it is always safe to read the letter of the Constitution in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence.' I. INTRODUCTION In 1845, antislavery constitutionalist Lysander Spooner ar- gued that the Declaration of Independence was originally a legal constitution with a direct bearing on how one ought to interpret the status of slavery under the Constitution of 1787.2 In 1889, the congressional act establishing the states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Washington required that their state constitutions "not be repugnant to the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence,"3 as if the two documents were of a piece.4 In 1995, attorney Chris- topher Darden argued to the jury in the O.J.