As an experiment some people were read passages from the Declaration without being told what it was. They were certain it came from a communist country. 
I’m not necessarily disagreeing with your analysis, but is that just your own view, or have some courts actually ruled that way as to the Fifth Amendment and abortion?
I’m not snarking; I’m just curious.
It is both a legal document and a political document. It gives reasons for declaring independence, which are political in nature, and it has the legal effect of severing ties with Great Britain and declaring the new government. President Lincoln, arguing that states could not secede argued that the Declaration of Independence was one in a series of legal acts establishing a legal framework for the new nation, there being charters given to colonies originally, legislatures in those colonies which eventually sent delegates to the Continental Congress etc.
President Lincoln’s July 4, 1961 Message to Congress in Special Session:
I have added the emphasis.
Here is an interesting yet understandable site about TDOI: http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/United-States-Declaration-of-Independence
Is the United States Declaration of Independence a legal document?
Totally and highly illegal. Just ask the British.
Total bullshit. As stated above, the Declaration, while it may color the interpretation of laws, has no legal force, with one important exception: it is the authority for the proposition that the United States is a separate and independent nation from Great Britain.
Two reasons: people getting abortions aren’t state actors. The Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments apply only to governments, not people.
Secondly, as noted, fetuses aren’t persons. That’s true in a scientific sense, of course, but it’s obviously also true in a legal sense, because if they were, we’d prosecute women who get abortions and the doctors who perform them as murderers, and we don’t. Q.E.D. The law could change, but there’s no other way to read the law as it currently stands.
–Cliffy
At the time, yes — but ever since the 1783 Treaty of Paris, in which Britain formally conceded our independence, the point is probably moot.
If the Declaration had never been written, but everything else had proceeded the same way (winning the war and signing the Treaty), then I’m pretty sure we’d be considered a separate and independent nation from Great Britain, both here and on the other side of the Atlantic.
I don’t know if the Mexicans ever bothered to write a declaration of independence from Spain, but in any case, both parties signed the Treaty of Cordoba in 1821, which made it a fact anyway from that point on.
Yes, that’s true. If things were different, then things would be different. But the way things actually happened, the Declaration is the legal document which severed the U.S.'s relationship with the Empire. Had the U.S. then gone on the lose the Revolution, then the Declaration wouldn’t have that legal force, but we won.
–Cliffy
I don’t think the DoI had any legal significance at the time. Many of the Convention members considered the May 15th vote accept John Adams’ proposal to be the “real” declaration of intent (which is why a relatively unknown Jefferson was chosen to write what became the most important document of the revolution.) The DoI was as much a page of propaganda as a legal document, intended to rally sentiment around revolution.
Only after the successful rebellion and ratification of the Constitution did the DoI start to gain in importance. Jefferson’s poetic and soaring words had much to do with it, but also the new Americans were looking for a specific date to celebrate their independence and the signing of the DoI was the easiest.
You are absolutely right. I have the book before me as I post. I’d also recommend Wills’ Under God. And yes, you can’t tell the players without a score card you and You can’t find the book without the right spelling of the author’s name and the correct name of the book.
Declaration of Independence of Northern America, 1813
However, Mexico formally declared independence in September 1821, one month after the Treaty of Cordoba.
AFAIK, the US Declaration of Independence has been mentioned as evidence of the Founders’ intent in legal opinions, like the Federalist Papers. I would not consider that as evidence that it is a “legal document”, though, like an actual opinion.