By KIMBERLYN LEARY, PhD, MPA
America turns 250 this year. As with all anniversaries, it is an occasion to reflect on origin stories, founding compacts, and pre-existing bargains.
As we reflect, it’s important to remember that, even as the framers declared their own independence when they designed our Constitution, they included a fugitive slave clause to ensure the return of enslaved human beings to the people asserting they owned them. Notably, the Constitution did not provide for a procedure, a process, or a penalty — except, of course, to the enslaved persons subject to it. It functioned as a directive but lacked the machinery of government at first.
That machinery arrived with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793. It allowed enslavers and their agents to cross state lines, seize people they claimed, and bring them before any judge for removal certificates. As the government matured, it built newer machinery. An 1850 act created new federal officers who could order renditions and conscript citizens into a posse.
Our declaration of liberty and its denial for some were ratified together. Call the first the “claim” — an aspiration to freedom, justice, and personhood. Call the second the “settlement” —the limits on justice that we tolerate. Our country has been part of this deal for 250 years.
Progress occurs when the claim gathers enough force and includes enough people to make the machinery yield. In the last century, this led to civil rights and voting rights statutes, as well as the Americans with Disabilities Act. More recently, it led to marriage equality. The settlement returns when enforcement weakens, or when new narratives do similar work.
This spring, in Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court reinterpreted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. This enabled the very vote dilution the statute was meant to prevent. The claim that equity is “unfair” and renewed calls for “merit” deserve attention. Treating everyone equally on an uneven field preserves the status quo. When a remedy is seen as a privilege, its withdrawal seems fair.
The claim has never been self-executing. Any apparatus to carry it can be shaped by whoever holds power. The machinery ahead will be powered further by generative, and soon, general artificial intelligence.
Still, we can do more than rage against the machine. Our resource is a force: enough persistent people to keep asserting countermeasures during reversals.
This is our inheritance: not a verdict in our favor, but the chance to make a demand again, now and in the future. It also means there is no resting point. The claim never executes itself automatically.
The lesson at 250: Freedom endures only if we keep insisting.
Kimberlyn Leary, PhD, MPA is the Emma Bloomberg Lecturer in Public Policy and Management at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a Senior Fellow at New America.
