The Constitution of the United States is one of the first written constitutions and one of the ‘oldest’ to have been made on the national level and applicable today. It was developed and adopted by the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in May and September, 1787. The Constitution of 1787 followed the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.
The U.S. Declaration of Independence, as the precaution of the U.S. Constitution, is a historical document in which the British colonies in the North America declared the independence from Great Britain, which was unanimously adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The principles that are proclaimed by the Declaration of Independence were the best interests of the national bourgeoisie, which acted in the alliance with the planters against the old colonial order and aristocracy, which were closely related to the colonial metropolis. The national bourgeoisie was interested in the revolutionary transformation in order to overcome the barriers to its advancement to the power.1
In the Declaration of Independence, the rights are stated as something extremely positive and, therefore, meaningful. The three rights - to the life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, - act here as the inherent properties, attributes, and at the same time as the treasure of the population. Moreover, the positive, substantive nature of the rights is emphasized by the assertion that the Creator has endowed the people with these rights.
Thus the phrase “...all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” is nothing but the definition of the rights’ reason, which is formulated in the form of the axioms. Namely the mention of the rights that are vested to the people
Bibliography: Appleby, Joyce. Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992. Armitage, David. The Declaration of Independence: a Global History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007. Becker, Carl. The Declaration of Independence: a Study in the History of Political Ideas. New York: Vintage Books, 1958. Ellis, Joseph. (2007). American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic. New York: A.A. Knopf. Ferling, John. (2003). A Leap in the Dark: the Struggle to Create the American Republic. Oxford New York: Oxford University Press. Jefferson, Thomas. (2013). The Declaration of Independence: A Transcription. The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html Wood, Gordon. The Radicalism of the American Revolution. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1992. WriteWork Contributors, “Short Analysis of the Principles of Republicanism”, WriteWork.com, accessed March 07, 2013. http://www.writework.com/essay/short-analysis-principles-republicanism