July 20, 2025

By Arthur H. Gunther III

thecolumnrule.com

A relatively simple mansion in Washington, D.C., with a four-year lease that President Theodore Roosevelt in 1901 renamed the “White House” is at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It is the second most-important address, after 701 Constitution Avenue. That’s where an original copy of the U.S. Constitution is on display, open to the people it serves.

The Constitution is enshrined in the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom, alongside the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. Today there is need for a fourth “document,” unwritten as is English Common Law and as important to defining principles of existing in a humanitarian way beyond the letter of the law.

Today, the lessee at 1600 Pennsylvania is with a seething grin ignoring the words posted on the three documents at 701 Constitution, especially “separation of powers,” “due process,” “cruel and unusual punishment,” “abridging freedom of speech,” “unreasonable search and seizure,” and “a speedy and public trial.”

Some conditions in the immigration detention centers established by the administration are akin to those in the Nazi concentration camps that Americans fought to liberate in World War II. The denial of due process for illegal persons and the inhumane living conditions in such places as “Alligator Alcatraz” are like taking the blood shed by Americans in all our wars and throwing it at the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence.

That the high-court majority, at address 1 First Street, has so far overlooked the effects of the administration’s violation of civil and human rights in favor of the letter of the law goes against humanity. Unwritten English Law, Common and otherwise, from which this American Experiment proceeds in part, emphasizes individual rights based on various judicial decisions. So, it becomes “living law” that considers the effect of law and can nullify actual regulation in a commonsense way.

It would serve America deeply if the Supreme Court justices would walk from 1 First Street to 701 Constitution Avenue and read the three enshrined documents and so declare that a fourth, the “National Conscience,” must now be proudly displayed in the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom. They can enshrine such a document, however unwritten on paper but existing in humanitarian legal decision.

The writer is a retired newspaperman.

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