The Importance of the Founding Documents of the USA

The UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) builds on the foundations of the US Bill of Rights using the Magna Carta and other Citizen Rights of the Roman, Persian, Egyptian and Babylonian empires to set a global standard for Citizen Rights. In this respect, accuracy of the intent and meaning of the founding documents for the Nation of the United States of America (i.e. United States, USA, US) is of utmost importance. With this goal in mind, I have written my understanding of the founding documents in Modern English using concise verbiage and grammar.

Important References

The Magna Carta is the most recent document on Citizen Rights prior to the Founding Documents of the United States; however, it written in Latin but has been translated to English by the British Government and is hosted online with the British Library. The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights was written in 1948 and built on the rights declared by the United States for its Citizens. It is a lot more concise and understandable to people speaking English as a first language due to it being less than 100 years old but the world is left the world is left with a large historical void for modern world governance without the Founding Documents of the United States. US Citizens also have additional rights inside the US than those outlined by the UDHR and it is important for visitors to the USA to understand those rights and be respectful. Two of those rights that are infamous around the world are the freedom of unrestricted free speech and the right to bear arms.

These two rights do not apply to citizens of other nations inside their own countries as speech normally has to be respectful and weapons possession often requires a license. The right to self defense is being examined around the world along with the fine line between censorship and allowing vitriol, hate speech and slander. The Founding Documents of the United States are over 200 years old and the Magna Carta is over 800 years old. While these documents may seem old and archaic, they still influence modern world governance and are legally valid documents whose terms can not be easily destroyed, repealed or amended.

The British Library has a short history on how the Magna Carta influenced the US Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, it mentions the US Bill of Rights and the UN’s UDHR. The British Library describes how these documents led to the UK’s Human Rights Act of 1998. The UN’s UDHR is over 70 years old and the UK’s Human Rights Act is less than 30 years old and in examining these two documents, the importance of the Founding Documents of the United States becomes more evident, even for those who are not US Citizens.