In the fourth symposium of the “We Hold These Truths: America at 250” initiative held at AEI on December 2, 2024, legal scholars and political scientists discussed how the founding generation viewed the “unalienable rights” immortalized by the Declaration of Independence. AEI’s John Yoo opened with a reading from the preamble. Former Circuit Judge Janice Rogers Brown examined the founders’ understanding of the people’s right to pursue happiness, while AEI’s Robert P. George explored the relationship between the pursuit of happiness and the political common good. During the second panel, the University of Notre Dame’s Michael Zuckert discussed equality’s implications on government authority and the comprehensive nature of the right to pursue happiness. University of Dallas’s Daniel Burns contrasted Lockean natural rights with the Declaration’s vision of natural rights, and Claremont McKenna College’s Charles R. Kesler closed by showing how the Committee of Five’s edits transformed Jefferson’s draft into the declaration we know today.
