This is my first article for SCOTUSblog, and I want to explain why I have chosen the header Born Free and Equal for my column. But the four most prominent states were indubitably Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, and they all endorsed the born free and equal creed. The language above in bold face is Justice Bushrod Washington’s bowdlerized version of the founding era born free and equal clauses. Sadly, many Americans, and most American intellectuals and presidents between 1881 and the Holocaust stopped believing in the born free and equal creed. Global horror and outrage over the Nazi Holocaust led President Harry Truman to re-dedicate the nation to the born free and equal creed when his ambassador to the United Nations, Eleanor Roosevelt, wrote the following in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights:Article 1All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.