After about five years of monitoring Nothing to do with Arbroath, I am delighted to encounter a post there that actually centers on Arbroath.
The Declaration of Arbroath was a declaration of Scottish independence, and set out to confirm Scotland's status as an independent, sovereign state and its use of military action when unjustly attacked. It is in the form of a letter submitted to Pope John XXII, dated 6 April 1320... the document subsequently played an influential role in the history of Scottish national identity and the creation of the common belief (whether based in legal reality or not) that in Scotland it is the 'people' that are sovereign, rather than the monarch or parliament, as in England.Now a book by an American historian, Linda Macdonald-Lewis argues that it was Arbroath's document that set the foundation for subsequent declarations of independence, including that of the United States:
MacDonald-Lewis believes the similarities between the cries of freedom in both documents are a deliberate move by America's founding fathers - half of those who signed the Declaration of Independence were of Scottish ancestry. Robert the Bruce, meanwhile, was the first ruler in Europe to be brought to power by a system recognisable as modern democracy, by "due consent and assent of us all"...Hat tip to "The Slide Guy" for the post's title.
Academics have previously linked America's founding fathers to the Scottish enlightenment that was ongoing during the drafting of the US charter... Thomas Jefferson and other key figures studied the enlightenment's leaders, such as Francis Hutcheson and David Hume, who were making a worldwide impact at a time when, as Voltaire, the French defender of civil liberties, said: "We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation."
Addendum: Some excellent clarification re Scots law and English law is presented in the Comments, including a notation that the opening words of the U.S. Constitution were written by a Scot. Hat tip to Michael Follon.