Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim Delivers Remarks at Naturalization Ceremony in Washington, D.C.
Washington, DC
Friday, September 28, 2018
Drafted in 1787 and ratified in 1789, the Constitution begins with three important words: “[w]e the people.” Those words boldly signify that our Republic was formed on the idea that power is vested principally in the people.
As President Ronald Reagan once said, “Almost all the worlds’ constitutions are documents in which governments tell the people what their privileges are. Our Constitution is a document in which We the People tell the government what it is allowed to do. We the People are free.”
The Constitution is the supreme law of the United States. It establishes the framework of our government and confers both rights and duties to those who are bound by it. It also enshrines our core values, among them self-government and individual liberty.
At its core, U.S. citizenship means a fidelity to the Constitution – a conscious, solemn commitment to America’s enduring principles and ideals. That is why the Oath of Allegiance, which all of you will recite today, calls upon you to “support and defend the Constitution and [the] laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic” and to “bear true faith and allegiance to the same.”
As former Attorney General John Ashcroft once said, “How best to nurture and defend liberty is the unending challenge of any self-governing people.” In the United States, we know that freedom, nurtured and protected through the rule of law, has made America exceptional.
The Constitution was designed to protect the rule of law – the principle that all persons, institutions, and entities are accountable to laws that are publicly promulgated, equally enforced, and independently adjudicated.