By Sarah Kellogg
As the Nation marks its 250th anniversary, the American experiment stands as both a celebration of progress and a reckoning with unfinished work. Nowhere is that tension more apparent than in the ongoing pursuit of what Walter Issacson calls the greatest sentence ever written: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”
What does it mean to say that the unalienable right spelled out in the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence is at the bedrock of our country? On these pages, Professors Peter Smith, Bradford Clark, Sonia Suter, Naomi Schoenbaum, Jonathan Turley, and Dean Dayna Bowen Matthew explore how far we have come over the past 250 years and what the next 250 will hold.
Landmark periods such as Reconstruction, the Women’s Suffrage Movement, and the Civil Rights Movement produced significant advances towards extending equal rights to many of those excluded when that greatest sentence was written in 1787. The resulting progress toward equality has been ensconced in several constitutional amendments and transformative federal legislation. Yet these advances were often followed by periods of resistance and reversal.
“If you think of 1776 as the starting point, the Declaration of Independence reflected a very narrow conception of equality,” said Peter J. Smith, the Arthur Selwyn Miller Research Professor. “The remarkable story of the last 250 years is how much broader that conception has become, but also how there is so much more to do.”
Equality in the United States has frequently been shaped through categories that both enable and constrain it. The law does not merely recognize differences; it helps construct them through medical definitions, administrative classifications, and legal frameworks that determine access to rights, resources, and citizenship.
Each generation has been compelled to revisit fundamental questions about who belongs within the promises of liberty and citizenship. As courts, lawmakers, and communities reassess long-standing assumptions about race, gender, and identity, the struggle over equality remains not only a matter of legal doctrine but also a test of the nation’s commitment to its founding principles.
“The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were aspirational documents, and not self-executing,” said Dean Dayna Bowen Matthew, the Harold H. Greene Professor of Law. “The principle that ‘all are created equal’ has functioned historically as a goal rather than an established fact. Over the past two and a half centuries, progress toward that goal has been neither linear nor guaranteed but instead marked by periods of advancement followed by retrenchment.”
Those tensions are especially present today, as public debates and legal rulings have questioned the expansion of rights and posited new definitions of identity over the last six decades. These extensions of rights have been neither permanent nor uncontested. The perspectives shared here highlight both the progress made and the challenges that remain in achieving racial and gender equality in the United States, portraying a nation still working to fulfill its democratic ideals.
A Legacy of Progress and Resistance
One of the defining themes in the history of equality in the United States is the cyclical nature of progress. Rights gained in one decade—or even one century—can be weakened or reversed in another. The Reconstruction Era and the rights of African Americans gained during that period provide a particularly instructive example.
Following the Civil War, Reconstruction sought to rebuild the nation and secure rights for formerly enslaved people.
“After the Civil War, the Union came back together and adopted the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution,” explained Bradford R. Clark, the William Cranch Research Professor of Law. “The 13th prohibits slavery, the 14th guarantees equal protection, due process, and privileges or immunities, and the 15th Amendment protects the right to vote. Thus, the Civil War Amendments redressed the deepest flaw in the original Constitution by embracing equal rights for all citizens regardless of race.”
"The principle that 'all are created equal' has functioned historically as a goal rather than an established fact."
- Dayna Bowen Matthew
Despite the remarkable expansion of African American political participation and economic autonomy during Reconstruction, the withdrawal of federal enforcement in the South led to the rapid erosion of those gains. Southern states rolled back rights and protections through Jim Crow laws, while poll taxes, literacy tests, and violence restricted African Americans’ ability to participate fully in civic life.
These inequalities persisted well into the twentieth century. The Supreme Court’s decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) upheld racial segregation, and discrimination remained pervasive across public and private life, including in education, housing, employment, and voting. Those conditions helped fuel the Civil Rights Movement, which sought to dismantle legally sanctioned segregation and secure meaningful voting rights.
From the nation’s founding—when political participation was denied to enslaved people, women, Indigenous peoples, and many without property—to the present day, the franchise has remained the subject of continuous struggle, expansion, and the curtailing of rights.
“The reality is that equal voting rights met opposition and attack before the ink on the final signatures on the Declaration of Independence had dried,” Matthew said. “Democracy, especially in America, as Alexis de Tocqueville observed, depends entirely on equality of voice and influence. The most dangerous threat to our democracy right now is inequality. And when you compare historic to contemporary efforts to remove equal access to the rights to vote, obtain an education, and enjoy basic civil liberties, they are aimed at many of the same categories of marginalized people over time.”
For example, recent administrative measures such as gerrymandering, voter identification laws, eliminating mail-in voting, polling place closures, and other barriers have disproportionately affected racial, socioeconomic, and ethnic minorities today, just as in the Jim Crow era.
At the judicial level, the Supreme Court has weakened key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the Court struck down the preclearance formula that required certain states to obtain federal approval before changing voting laws. It further narrowed voting rights protections in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (2021) and, most recently, in Louisiana v. Callais (2026), making it more difficult to challenge electoral maps that dilute the voting power of racial minorities.
"The 13th prohibits slavery, the 14th guarantees equal protection, due process, and privileges or immunities, and the 15th Amendment protects the right to vote."
- Bradford R. Clark
To be sure, at GW Law, a school characterized by all forms of diversity, not all GW Law faculty agree. On the one hand, Matthew criticizes the decision, contending that justices have underestimated the persistence of racial discrimination in voting. In contrast, supporters of the Callais decisions say the Court is enforcing constitutional limits on federal authority and preventing unequal treatment of states based on outdated conditions.
In contrast, other faculty members see these decisions differently. “The Court did not ‘gut’ the Voting Rights Act. It also did not strike down Section 2 of the act,” wrote Jonathan Turley, the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law, in The Hill magazine after the Callais decision. “Rather, the court held that neither the act nor the Constitution gives legislators authority to manipulate districts so as to effectively guarantee the race of the elected representatives — any race.” The national discourse on voter equality is an ongoing conversation, and nowhere is that conversation more robust than at GW Law.
Gender, Race, and Reproductive Freedom
As with race, questions of gender equality remain deeply shaped by cultural and social narratives. That is especially true of the perception that gains for women come at men’s expense. Few issues illustrate those tensions more clearly than reproductive rights.
“Some are operating with a zero-sum game view of the world,” said Professor Sonia Suter, who was awarded the newly endowed Kahan Family Professorship of Health Law and Policy. “They believe that if one person now has more rights, that takes rights away from them. I reject that framing. If we treat women with more equality, we all gain.”
Suter said recent legal developments represent more than a policy shift; they signal a broader retreat from equality. In 2022, the high court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade and ended the federal constitutional right to abortion. By allowing individual states to set their own abortion laws, the ruling led to widespread restrictions in many states and increased barriers to reproductive health care.
“We’re going in the opposite direction of equality,” she said, pointing to Dobbs and its far-reaching consequences. “Women who are denied the right to choose an abortion are at greater risk of intimate partner violence, serious health problems, and even death.”
Suter notes that abortion care is an essential part of women’s health care, which means that “abortion bans deprive women of important health care.” But the risks to women are also economic, with the denial of abortions leading to “greater risks of economic difficulties and insecurities for women and their children.”
The Dobbs decision also intensifies racial inequalities. Because the incidence of unintended pregnancies is greater in people of color and low-income individuals, “abortion bans disproportionately harm women and children in those groups,” she said. Suter said that studies have shown that such bans are “correlated with higher rates of infant mortality, with black babies disproportionately affected.”
Restrictions on reproductive freedom reverberate far beyond individual decisions, influencing education, careers, economic stability, and opportunity across generations. At the center of the debate is autonomy: the ability to control one’s own body as a prerequisite for full participation in social and economic life.
Yet the most profound disruptions may still lie ahead. Emerging technologies such as ectogenesis—the ability to gestate embryos outside the human body—raise fundamental questions about the relationship between reproduction and women’s bodies.
“If you could grow (a fetus) in an artificial womb and never need women’s bodies, what does that lead to?” Suter asked. “How does that challenge our notions of viability and autonomy?”
Assisted reproductive technologies in the U.S. operate in what Suter calls a “Wild West” of minimal oversight. This revolution could lead to broader inequalities, as those seeking IVF or other specialized fertility treatments are often wealthier and wield greater political influence. It could undermine reproductive justice in making it harder for lower-income people and people of color to have agency in deciding whether and when to have children.
These questions also emerge in contemporary debates over gender identity. While politically polarizing, such debates underscore a broader reality: sex and gender are not merely biological facts, but legal and social categories shaped by government institutions. Recognizing that complexity may create new avenues for equality even as it challenges previous assumptions.
"They believe that if one person now has more rights, that takes rights away from them. I reject that framing. If we treat women with me equality, we all gain.
- Sonia Suter
Even amid setbacks, Suter remains optimistic about the long arc of change on this 250th anniversary. Progress in women’s rights has never followed a straight path; it has advanced through cycles of expansion and rollback.
“It’s difficult to envision a future in which there is not, in some form, a renewed constitutional recognition of the right to bodily autonomy and reproductive self-determination,” Suter said. “I don’t think we will stay here forever.”
A Revised Biological Context
The evolving understanding of race and gender has complicated both legal and scientific frameworks. For decades, civil-rights protections often rested on the idea of immutable characteristics—traits people are born with and cannot change.
While that framework helped secure protections for marginalized groups, it also created a paradox: if differences among groups are viewed as fundamental, disparities in pay, power, and opportunity can be portrayed as natural rather than unjust.
Today, scientific consensus generally rejects race as a biologically discrete category, yet the law continues to grapple with race because of the enduring effects of historically constructed racial hierarchies, said Professor Naomi Schoenbaum.
“We can see that race is a social construct,” said Schoenbaum, emphasizing that legal protections have endured even as biological determinism around race has been rejected. “The implication is that equality may not require sameness at all. It may require abandoning the idea that biology should define social hierarchy.”
Schoenbaum argues that current understandings of gender lag behind contemporary understandings of race. She said current “thinking in law about sex is like 100, 150 years behind thinking about race” when it comes to biology.
That lag continues to shape workplace norms, political representation, and debates over reproductive freedom. Biology remains a factor in discussions of gender equality, even as scholars question the extent to which biological differences should determine legal and social outcomes.
These questions have also become central to debates surrounding LGBTQ+ rights, particularly transgender rights. As transgender Americans have gained visibility and legal protections in employment, education, and other areas, the public debate has increasingly focused on the relationship between gender identity and biological sex.
"The court held that neither the act nor the Constitution gives legislators authority to manipulate districts so as to effectively guarantee the race of the elected representatives—Any Race."
- Jonathan Turley
Supporters of transgender rights argue that gender identity is a fundamental aspect of a person’s identity and that transgender individuals should be protected from discrimination. Opponents contend that biological differences between males and females remain relevant in areas such as women’s sports, prisons, shelters, and medical treatment for minors. The debate illustrates how biology has been and continues to be a central factor in the evolving struggle over civil rights and identity in America.
Differences in health outcomes, for example, often stem less from inherent biological distinctions than from environmental and socioeconomic factors such as access to nutritious food, stable employment, and quality health care. Such disparities have also been exacerbated by unequal investment in scientific research across various groups. Recognizing these structural causes is important because assumptions about biological differences can shape how society interprets inequality in the first place.
“If people, based on biology, are fundamentally dissimilar, then disparities in pay, power, and opportunity can be framed as inevitable rather than unjust,” said Schoenbaum. “I don’t think you’re going to really get to greater equality if we think that people are fundamentally different.”
Culture Rather Than Destiny
The U.S. legal system has long faced a fundamental challenge: bridging the gap between aspirational principles and lived experience. The historical record suggests that progress is contingent rather than inevitable.
“If the benchmark is whether we’ve created a society without wealth gaps and opportunity gaps based on race and sex, then we still have a fair amount of work to do,” said Smith.
This moment highlights the reality that rights secured through legislation and judicial interpretation require ongoing advocacy, civic engagement, and vigilance to endure. Matthew emphasized that sustaining those rights depends on the continued commitment of law schools, legal professionals, and government institutions to advancing justice. Legal education, particularly through impact lawyering programs, remains a critical part of that effort.
“Achieving equality will depend on the willingness of legal professionals, policymakers, and citizens to confront structural inequality,” Matthew said, “and ensure that the promises of our founders are more than aspirational, that they are real.”