When Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence
that "all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness," he could not have
meant then what we understand these words to mean today. When
the framers of the government wrote in the Constitution that "No
person shall be...deprived of life, liberty, or property,
without due process of law," and that the Constitution is "the
supreme Law of the Land," they conveniently omitted a definition
of the word person. When presidents from Abraham Lincoln to
Woodrow Wilson to Franklin Delano Roosevelt enforced two sets of
laws themselves—one that treated whites fairly and one that
treated blacks unfairly—or permitted the government to conduct
gruesome medical experiments on black men, what did they think
of their oaths to uphold the Constitution? Jefferson's immortal
words in the Declaration attached the new nation's soul to what
lawyers and judges