By Mathias Risse
Approaching the Nation’s Big Anniversary
The irony is profound: In many ways America inspired and helped create the international human rights system – basic ideas and legal realities – while systematically denying rights to many of its own people all along.
As America prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of its founding, a year from now, the nation finds itself at an extraordinary convergence of memory that extends beyond its borders. It is in fact eight significant anniversaries that cluster around this monumental birthday, each marking a different chapter not only in the contested story of American democracy, but also in the global evolution of human rights. Five arrive in 2025: the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, the 60th of the Immigration and Nationality Act and the Voting Rights Act, the 35th of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the 10th of the Supreme Court judgment in Obergefell v. Hodges, which established marriage equality for the LGBTQI+ community, and the 5th anniversary of the death of George Floyd. These are important waypoints on our journey toward this great celebration. Three more await in 2026, including the big anniversary itself (which happens to be the same anniversary for one of the great guiding books on capitalism, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations), as well as the 5th anniversary of the attack on the Capitol in 2021 and the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Little Bighorn, which ended large-scale Indigenous resistance to conquest. Together, they form a complex tapestry that reveals how America's struggle to fulfill its founding promises became inseparable from the worldwide movement for human dignity and justice.
These anniversaries compel us to look beyond patriotic celebration: the was not merely the nation’s founding document, but one of history's first politically potent assertions that there are rights all persons have that derive from human nature. The Declaration’s radical claim that "all men are created equal" and endowed with "unalienable rights" was grounded in Western traditions, but nonetheless became a template for modern human rights discourse, inspiring liberation movements worldwide and much international law while also exposing America's failures to live up to its revolutionary ideals.
The irony is profound: In many ways America inspired and helped create the international human rights system – basic ideas and legal realities – while systematically denying rights to many of its own people all along. Each of our eight anniversaries illuminates this tension, showing how domestic struggles for inclusion became entangled with global movements for justice, how international human rights law increasingly held America accountable for its promises, and how the nation's credibility as a human or also civil rights leader remained challenged by domestic practices. “America First” is the message this government sends to the world. As we approach the big birthday of 2026 and must wonder what America is and wants to be to the world, it is only apt to get these matters on our radar. We are turning 250 only once. Now is the time to take in the bigger picture.
2025: Five Waypoints as We Approach the Big Anniversary
The 80th Anniversary: Creating the Human Rights World (1945)
Eighty years ago, World War II ended with America standing as one of the two dominant powers and the primary architect of the post-war order that has included the international human rights system. The war's conclusion in 1945 led to the United Nations, whose proclaimed "fundamental human rights" and "the dignity and worth of the human person" as organizing principles for the postwar world. The U.S. was a driving force behind this revolutionary idea: that individuals possessed rights that transcend national boundaries and that the international community has both the authority and the obligation to protect them. To this day, the generation that fought World War II and enabled the creation of the postwar order is called “the Greatest Generation.”
The (UDHR), adopted in 1948 under leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt, drew on language and concepts from the American Declaration of Independence. Though the Declaration of Independence does not talk about dignity, the UDHR’s assertion that "all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights" did echo Jefferson's words and extended them to all humanity without the racial, gender, or national exclusions that had limited the original, and without presupposing the Western philosophical background that inevitably shaped the founders’ thinking. America contributed to the globalization of its founding ideals, including also increasingly the development of international law that could also be used to judge its own conduct.
Yet this triumph of what one might call American idealism was not consistently matched by American practice. The nation that championed universal human rights at the same time maintained a segregated military, denied voting rights to millions of Black citizens, and incarcerated tens of thousands of Japanese Americans in camps. After the was adopted in 1948, some American politicians rejected it because they feared it might apply to the treatment of African Americans in the South. The U.S. would not ratify the convention until 1988.
The Cold War became a human rights competition, with both superpowers using the other's domestic failures as propaganda while committing their own violations abroad.
This 80th anniversary reveals how America's emergence as a global superpower created both unprecedented opportunities for human rights advancement and new forms of violations. The global reach that enabled America to promote human rights and democracy – and made the U.S. a suitable home for many of the major players in international civil society – also facilitated covert operations, military interventions, and support for brutal dictatorships that systematically violated the rights America claimed to champion. The Cold War became a human rights competition, with both superpowers using the other's domestic failures as propaganda while committing their own violations abroad.
This anniversary illuminates a paradox that has defined America's relationship with human rights all along: the nation that helped create human rights as we know them has consistently struggled to submit to their authority, claiming exemption from the very standards they imposed on others.
The 60th Anniversary: Cold War Human Rights and Domestic Transformation (1965)
Sixty years ago, the legislative revolution of 1965 demonstrated how international human rights pressure could help drive domestic change. The and the were not merely responses to domestic civil rights movements: they also were America's attempt to align its practices with human rights principles it promoted globally during the Cold War.
Soviet propaganda had relentlessly pilloried racial segregation as evidence of capitalist hypocrisy, asking how America could claim to lead the "free world" while denying basic rights to many of its own citizens. The civil rights movement increasingly connected domestic racism to international human rights concerns, with leaders appealing to global opinion, much as the Declaration of Independence had done, and connecting American segregation to colonialism and apartheid worldwide. While most leaders – and certainly Martin Luther King Jr. – primarily used civil rights language grounded in American constitutional tradition, international supporters and activists like Malcolm X framed the struggle in human rights terms. The 1965 laws represented America's recognition that its human rights credibility necessitated domestic reform.
Passage of the Immigration Act was meant to acknowledge that immigration policy based on national origin – which had been the standard before – violated human dignity. The previous system had effectively treated people as more or less worthy of American opportunity based on race and ethnicity, contradicting both the idea of equality in the Declaration of Independence and the UDHR’s prohibition of discrimination. The new law opened America to immigrants from Asia and Africa while simultaneously restricting Latin American immigration for the first time. The Immigration Act created the multicultural America we know today, but through contradictory means - expanding opportunities for some while limiting them for others.
The Voting Rights Act extended to Black Americans the political rights the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – one of those human rights treaties the U.S. signed and ratified – would codify as universal human rights. This law's passage was hastened by embarrassment over images of peaceful protesters beaten by police, broadcast globally and undermining America's claim to moral leadership, a claim that had been so hard-won in the two world wars.
Yet the 60th anniversary of these legislative accomplishments also reveals how domestic progress would create new human rights problems. The Immigration Act's caps on Western Hemisphere migration, combined with the end of the Bracero Program that had enabled Mexicans to work temporarily in the U.S., led to the undocumented population that would become a persistent human rights issue. American demand for labor from south of the border often outpaced what legal migration remained possible after 1965. The U.S. would be an attractive destination for so many who could not make ends meet or who lived under oppressive regimes – themselves historical arrangements that were closely intertwined with U.S. politics, exemplified through the problematic presence of the United Fruit Company in many countries south of the border in the 20th century. Also, the Watts riots in Los Angeles, occurring just days after the Voting Rights Act's passage, demonstrated that civil and political rights were insufficient without economic and social rights, a lesson that international human rights law recognized but American practice often ignored. (Of course, the U.S. never signed the International Covenant on Social, Economic, and Cultural Rights.)
The anniversary of Watts connects to contemporary human rights concerns. The militarized policing that would later be a background factor in the killing of George Floyd had roots in the "law and order" response to urban uprisings of the 1960s. The same tactics, equipment, and mindset that America deployed in Vietnam were turned against its citizens, creating domestic human rights challenges that persist to this day.
The 35th Anniversary: America as Human Rights Pioneer in the Domain of Disability (1990)
The 35th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 2025 stands as a powerful reminder of America's capacity for human rights leadership when it chooses to act. Unlike many areas where America lags behind international standards, the ADA became a global template for disability rights, demonstrating how American civil rights innovation could drive worldwide human rights progress. The Act's comprehensive approach – addressing both traditional civil liberties and economic rights through accessibility requirements and reasonable accommodations – influenced disability rights legislation across continents and helped shape the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities of 2006.
Yet this success story also highlights a troubling pattern: America pioneered the legal framework that became international law, only to later refuse ratification of the very UN treaty its own legislation had inspired. The ADA's anniversary thus embodies both America's potential as a human rights leader and its tendency to retreat from international systems it helps create.
The 10th Anniversary: Love, Hate, and Dignity (2015)
A decade ago, two events just weeks apart illuminated both the expansion and the violent limits of human rights in America. The Charleston Church Massacre on June 17 and the Obergefell decision on June 26 represented the dual nature of American progress: significant expansions of human dignity alongside persistent violations of basic rights. Dylann Roof's murder of nine Black worshippers constituted what civil rights advocates called domestic terrorism motivated by white supremacist ideology. International human rights monitors cited Charleston as evidence of the persistent hate violence UN bodies had documented in reports on racial discrimination in the U.S. Charleston provided stark evidence that these were not abstract legal concerns but matters of life and death.
, announced nine days later, represented a dramatic expansion of human rights protection. The decision recognized marriage equality as a fundamental right, aligning American law with a growing international consensus that LGBTQ+ rights are human rights and showing how domestic civil rights and international human rights had become interconnected. Justice Kennedy's majority opinion explicitly grounded marriage equality in human dignity, the foundational concept of international human rights law. The decision recognized that the "pursuit of happiness" promised in the Declaration required legal recognition of same-sex couples' relationships and families. It demonstrated how the 1776 ideals of liberty and equality could evolve to encompass new perspectives on human dignity. Compared to other conservative justices, Anthony Kennedy was distinctly interested in international law also as a reference point for American law.
The 10th anniversary arrived amid renewed attacks on LGBTQ+ rights, particularly targeting transgender Americans whereas international human rights standards have increasingly recognized gender identity and expression as protected characteristics. The global backlash against LGBTQ+ rights – from Russia's "gay propaganda" bans to Uganda's anti-homosexuality legislation – shows how human rights progress remains fragile and contested worldwide.
The 5th Anniversary: State Violence and Global Solidarity (2020)
Five years ago, on May 25, 2020, a police officer's murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis violated the most fundamental human right: the right to life. Floyd's death, captured on video and witnessed by millions, provided visceral evidence of what international human rights monitors had long documented – that police all too commonly violate the human rights of Black Americans, often with impunity.
The global response to Floyd's murder demonstrated how human rights violations in America reverberate worldwide. Protests erupted in dozens of countries, from London and Berlin to Sydney, as people recognized this incident as a human rights issue rather than merely an American domestic concern. By the time of Floyd’s death, the Black Lives Matter movement had for the better part of a decade drawn attention to police violence against African Americans. Black Lives Matter framed police violence as a systematic human rights abuse, connecting American racial injustice to global struggles against state violence and structural racism. The UN Human Rights Council condemned Floyd's murder and called for investigations into systemic racism in American policing. UN experts characterized police violence against Black Americans as a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees the right to life and prohibits racial discrimination. The UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent had previously documented how American policing perpetuated the legacy of slavery and violated international human rights law.
Technologies of oppression developed in response to uprisings that occur against military presence abroad eventually are deployed against people back home.
The uprisings following Floyd's death revealed both the power and the limitations of human rights advocacy. While millions demanded justice and accountability, the structural changes necessary to address systemic racism remained elusive. The conviction of Derek Chauvin represented a rare moment of accountability. This 5th anniversary also illustrates how America's global "war on terror" had militarized domestic policing in ways that violated human rights. The surveillance technologies, military equipment, or counterinsurgency tactics used in Iraq and Afghanistan were deployed against American protesters. This is not unusual. Technologies of oppression developed in response to uprisings that occur against military presence abroad eventually are deployed against people back home.
2026: Foundational Contradictions and Global Implications
The year of the monumental anniversary will come with some other waypoints as well that we must bear in mind as we reflect on what character the country wants to have for itself and what it wants to be to the world.
January 6: Another 5th Anniversary and a Contemporary Human Rights Crisis
Much like the 5th anniversary of the death of George Floyd, one waypoint of 2026 too is not merely a historical anniversary but a contemporary crisis: the ongoing assault on democratic institutions that threatens to undermine previous progress. The increase of authoritarian tendencies in American government (see my recent posting on the dismantling of accountability), the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, and the ongoing attacks on voting rights represent challenges to foundational human rights principles that America helped establish. The attack on the peaceful transfer of power, incited by a sitting president (as found ), demonstrated how fragile American democracy now is. International observers who typically monitored elections in developing countries suddenly found themselves documenting democratic backsliding in the U.S.
The human rights system America helped create can now serve as a check on American backsliding.
Systematic effort to restrict voting rights – through voter ID laws, limitations on early voting, and purging of voter rolls – go against the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees universal suffrage. These restrictions disproportionately affect communities of color, constituting what international human rights law defines as indirect discrimination. Already back in 2013 the Supreme Court's gutting of the Voting Rights Act in removed protections that international human rights bodies had praised as models for other countries. The human rights system America helped create can now serve as a check on American backsliding, with international bodies at least on a good number of occasions willing to criticize American violations.
July 4: The Declaration of Independence and Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (250th Anniversary)
The dual 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations reveals tensions between political equality and economic inequality that have defined both American society and global human rights law. These twin texts made significant contributions to philosophical foundations of modern democracy and capitalism, but their relationship has proven problematic for the purposes of realizing human rights.
The Declaration's assertion that "all men are created equal" became the foundation for civil and political rights in international human rights law. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights draws on the Declaration's language about inalienable rights. Yet the economic system Smith analyzed – which America very much pioneered – has sat uneasily at best with the equality Jefferson proclaimed. The UDHR recognized this tension by including economic and social rights alongside civil and political ones. Articles 22-25 guarantee rights to social security, work, education, healthcare, and an adequate standard of living. These provisions acknowledge that political equality needs to be supplemented with economic security: that "pursuit of happiness" requires material conditions that make happiness possible to begin with.
America's longstanding resistance to economic and social rights has been a persistent source of international criticism. The U.S. has never ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, arguing that such rights are aspirational rather than legally binding. This position has become increasingly untenable as inequality in America has reached levels not seen since the Gilded Age, undermining not only the credibility of American human rights leadership, but the long-term prospects of human rights in the U.S.
The 250th anniversary also forces a reckoning with how the tension between the Declaration's political ideals and Smith's economic theories plays out globally. American-led globalization has spread both democratic ideals and market capitalism worldwide, often with contradictory effects on human rights. While economic development has lifted millions out of poverty, it has also created new forms of inequality and exploitation that violate human dignity. The immigration patterns discussed in our other anniversaries connect to this economic-political tension. People migrate seeking both the political freedoms promised by the Declaration and the economic opportunities analyzed by Smith. Yet American immigration policy has arguably failed to provide adequate legal pathways for this migration in some contexts, leading to a highly vulnerable undocumented population.
June 25: The 150th Anniversary of Little Bighorn and Indigenous Rights (1876)
Just nine days before America celebrates its 250th birthday, the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Little Bighorn will force a confrontation with a persistent human rights violation of enormous scale: the ongoing colonization and cultural oppression of Indigenous peoples. The battle in what today is Montana – which the Indigenous know as the Battle of the Greasy Grass, often still taught in school as “Custer’s Last Stance,” after the commanding officer who led his troops to perdition – marks the end of large-scale armed resistance on the Great Plains by Indigenous people against their own conquest. This subjugation unfolded over centuries, and included episodes of mass annihilation, such as the California Genocide that Governor Gavin Newsom acknowledged some years ago and .
The UN Genocide Convention, adopted in 1948, defines that term to include "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." Systematic destruction of Indigenous nations, cultures, and ways of life meets this definition, yet even acknowledgements of these matters remain rare. It seems most people who live in California never heard of the California Genocide, and overall contemporary America is largely uninterested in the unfolding of this conquest and its calamitous impact on the people who inhabited the continent when others started to seek their own fortune here.
The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted in 2007, establishes comprehensive standards for Indigenous rights, including rights to self-determination, cultural preservation, and traditional territories. The U.S. was one of only four countries to vote against the declaration, later reversing its position but still failing to implement its provisions. The anniversary of Little Bighorn highlights how America's treatment of Indigenous peoples violates human rights standards that America helped create. Contemporary Indigenous rights issues – from the in North Dakota to the in size of Bears Ears National Monument in Utah – demonstrate that the challenges are ongoing. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has repeatedly found that the U.S. violates Indigenous peoples' rights to property, culture, and self-determination. The commission has called for recognition of Indigenous sovereignty, protection of sacred sites, and consultation on projects affecting Indigenous territories.
America's continued resistance to implementation of Indigenous rights allies it with repressive governments worldwide.
The 150th anniversary of Little Bighorn occurs as Indigenous peoples worldwide use international human rights law to protect their rights and territories. The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples has become a powerful tool for Indigenous advocacy, providing legal standards that national governments increasingly cannot ignore. America's continued resistance to implementation of Indigenous rights allies it with repressive governments worldwide.
Climate change has emerged as a new human rights issue that highlights American failures. The UN Human Rights Council has recognized that climate change threatens fundamental human rights, including rights to life, health, and adequate housing. America's historical responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions and its resistance to climate action violate the human rights of vulnerable populations worldwide, particularly Indigenous peoples and vulnerable populations in the Global South.
Toward 2026: The Unfinished Revolution and the Choice Before America
As America approaches its 250th anniversary, the convergence of these eight anniversaries reveals a nation still struggling to align practice with principles. The Declaration of Independence is a major milestone in the historical process of gaining recognition for universal rights, but America has consistently failed to live up to standards it helped establish. Yet this failure also represents an opportunity. The international human rights system provides tools for holding America accountable and standards for measuring progress. The same global human rights law that documents American failures offers pathways for reform and models from other countries that have made greater progress. This is obviously not something we would want to count on in the America of 2025. But again, a 250th anniversary is a big occasion, one for reflecting on what else is possible, given what is already in the system. We are turning 250 only once.
The human rights framework transforms our understanding of all these eight anniversaries from a purely national story to a global one. America's struggle with its founding ideals connects to worldwide movements for dignity and justice. Domestic movements for civil rights, LGBTQ+ equality, and racial justice are part of global human rights movements that transcend national boundaries.
This tale of eight anniversaries, viewed through the lens of human rights, reveals America to be at a crossroads. The nation can choose to fulfill its role as a human rights leader by working to align practices with principles (without any gaslighting), or it can undermine the international human rights system it helped create. Fulfilling America's promise requires acknowledging and addressing the persistent violations we have discussed. It also requires ratifying the international human rights treaties America has long resisted and submitting to international human rights jurisdiction. And it would require recognizing that America's founding promise entails obligations to all Americans and to all humanity.
The unfinished revolution that began in 1776 continues in global struggles for human rights.
The convergence of these anniversaries offers an opportunity for the honest reckoning that human rights require. It challenges America to confront failures while recommitting to its founding ideals. At 250, America can choose to lead the world in human rights protection, or to chant “America first” in ways that will only encourage others to do the same at times when global coordination matters more than ever (climate change, Artificial Intelligence, other forms of technological disruption). The choice will shape America's legacy and the future of human rights worldwide. In an era of rising authoritarianism and democratic backsliding, the world needs American leadership in human rights protection. But leadership requires the humility to acknowledge past failures and the courage to do better.
The unfinished revolution that began in 1776 continues in global struggles for human rights. The remainder of America's third century can be defined by fulfilling the universal promise the Declaration of Independence proclaimed. The eight anniversaries we have discussed here remind us that this work – difficult, incomplete, and essential – remains the true test of American democracy at 250 years.
Mathias Risse, Faculty Director, Carr-Ryan Center
Anthony Quintano - Wikimedia Commons
