Politicians Confuse the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence

And so do the people.

Hot Air has a interesting post at Obamateurism of the Day

Now to be fair this is a bi partisan affair. We see this happen all the time in both camps.

I would not be shocked if in the thousands of speeches Ronald Reagan gave he played loose with this too.

Last year one would get the impression that Doug Kmiec in his arguments for Obama were confusing the two. Trust me he knows the difference. However he kept mixing the two because well he knows people are just sort of cloudy on that

The fact is that the Declaration of Independence has no legal authority. I am not saying it is not important but again it does not have any binding legal authority like the Constitution. Though people on both the left and right would like it too. I think the Natural Law Advocates very much would love for it be elevated for instance .

However when one goes to Law School there is rarely a class called the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE like there is for Con Law, Torts, Contracts, etc

The last President that seemed to try to press the claim that the Declaration of Independence had some binding legal authority similar to the Constitution was Lincoln. He made some eloquent arguments but they never really took hold.

Still it is important. It is the Country's DNA as it were. But for binding positive law not so much.