The opening text of the Declaration of Independence reads: 

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness—-That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new Government...

The Declaration of Independence was inspired by the burgeoning liberal tradition which held that it was nobody's natural right to rule over a people regardless of their wishes. Political legitimacy, instead of being based upon divine right or noble birth, is a matter of self-determination among those who consent to being governed. 

The Declaration of Independence was written by Thomas Jefferson. He famously adapted John Locke’s views that all men have the right to "life, liberty, and property" to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

The Federalist Papers were written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay in 1790 and 1791 as a series of newspaper editorials. The Federalist Papers were a series of essays written to support the ratification of the Constitution and garner support for a strong and centralized national government.

In the American system of federalism, the federal government makes the supreme law of the nation that all the states must follow; however, to prevent a tyranny of the national government (something greatly feared by the states and the Constitutional framers) the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution declares that all powers that are not explicitly reserved for the federal government fall to the state governments.

For many Americans the freedom to practice their religion was one of the reasons why they moved to the colonies in the first place. Many colonists had been persecuted for their religion in Europe, and so when it came time to establish their own government, freedom of religion was considered extremely important. The Establishment Clause in the Constitution prohibits the government from establishing a state religion.

The Free Exercise Clause is included in the part of the Constitution that features the Establishment Clause, and thus it is related to freedom of religion. The Establishment Clause prohibits the government from establishing a state religion. The Free Exercise Clause forbids the government from preventing any religious group from freely practicing their religious beliefs.

The Establishment Clause of the Constitution states that the government can make no law establishing a state religion, and the Free Exercise Clause says that the government cannot stop any American group or individual from freely practicing their religious beliefs.

Plessy v. Ferguson was a case that focused on the matter of racial segregation policy in the city of New Orleans, Louisianna. Homer Plessy, a man of Creole descent, and his allies on the New Orleans Committee of Citizens staged an act of civil disobedience when Plessy attempted to ride on a white's only railroad car within the city. At the time, New Orleans had implemented a number of policies aimed at keeping whites separate from people of color in public. In Plessy, the court ruled against Homer Plessy and held that racial segregation was legal as long as people of color were provided with equal accomodations while being held separate in public. Over 50 years later, in Brown v. Board of Education, the court reversed precedent and ruled that separate facilities were inherently unequal, especially in the case of schools.

Brown v. Board of Education (1954) is one of the most famous Supreme Court cases in American history. Certainly it is the most famous case of the civil rights era. It overturned the 1896 decision of Plessy v. Ferguson, which had originally ruled that segregation was legal under the "separate, but equal" idea. The Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that "separate but equal" segregation was inherently not equal and violated the Equal Protection Clause established in the Fourteenth Amendment.

The case of the Scottsboro boys centered around a group of African-Americans who were found guilty of raping two white teenage girls on a train in 1931 and were sentenced to the death penalty. The case was appealed on numerous occasions on the grounds that the boys had been denied a fair and equal trial process. It has come to represent the extent of institutionalized racism in the American legal system during the first half of the twentieth century.