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6 J. Christian Jurisprudence 95 (1987)
What is Equality - The Declaration of Independence Revisited

handle is hein.journals/jcj6 and id is 117 raw text is: WHAT IS EQUA IY? THE DECIARATION OF INDEPENDENCE REVISITED* Hary V Jaffa Equality is the well-nigh irresistible principle of authority in the modem world, as Alexis de Tocqueville observed so well so long ago. The concessions to slavery that formed part of the compromises of the original Constitution may once have cast doubt upon that authority here in the United States. But the Civil War, the Civil War amendments to the Constitution, and the implementing of those amendments in recent years should have gone far to remove any ground for such doubt. Nor should we forget the Nineteenth Amendment, the culmination of nearly a century of agitation, reminding us how early in our history the ferment of equality reached the distinction of the sexes no less than that of the races. In the second half of the twentieth century equality seems to have made its presence felt most powerfully within the Constitution in the words of the Fourteenth Amendment wherein it is provided that No State shall .... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Under the aegis of this clause the Supreme Court of the United States has engineered a vast social revolution. Any deliberate separation of tax-supported facilities by race-whether these be swimming pools, golf courses, public transportation systems, colleges and universities, or elementary and secondary schools-has been forbidden as a violation of the Constitution. An amendment to the Constitution is now before the states, guaranteeing equal rights (other than voting) to women. It is difficult to imagine what the rights are for which guarantees are sought, and which cannot find protection within the existing scope of the Fourteenth Amendment. Inequality because of race and sex has been assailed in the most sweeping terms by the great series of civil rights acts, culminating in those of 1964 and 1965. It is hardly too much to say that the imagination has been exhausted in the search for new demands for equality. Perhaps no assault upon the alleged citadel of inequality has been more potent than that made in the field of representation. The reapportionment revolution, with its slogan, one man, one vote, has nearly unhinged some of our most settled, or archaic, constitutional arrangements, particularly in the field of state government. * This article is taken from The Conditions of Freedom: Essays in Political Philosopby, copyright @1975, pages 149-160. Used by permission of The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland 21218.

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