Sources of the Declaration of Independence

This lecture will explore the relationship between the common law tradition and the Declaration of Independence.  Dr. Pinheiro will look at the Declaration of Independence as the fruit of organic development in the English traditions of petitions, declarations, and common law.  He will also reflect on ways in which Thomas Jefferson joined together the seeming opposites of the natural rights and universal claims made by liberalism on the one hand, and the particular rights of Englishmen under common law and the ancient but unwritten English constitution on the other.