This year, America will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, a document that came into existence during a period of transformational thinking about the relationship between the people and how they are governed. In an era of European monarchies and the divine right of kings, the idea that those in government derive their power from the consent of the governed was a stark departure from the status quo.

A. Pursuit of Happiness

The Declaration of Independence, penned by Thomas Jefferson, declared to the world that certain truths were self-evident. People are endowed with certain unalienable rights. Among these unalienable rights are “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”[1]

Jefferson adapted this important phrase from John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (1690), in which Locke identified life, liberty and property as foundational natural rights.[2] Scholars have long hypothesized on why Jefferson replaced “property” with the “pursuit of happiness.”[3] Today, I want to reflect on what this small, but meaningful, adaptation means for us today, and specifically, what this means for the work of the Commission.

The pursuit of happiness. It is a more elastic and somewhat more amorphous concept than property, but perhaps the most distinctly American idea in a document full of them. It is not the guarantee of happiness. It is not the government’s obligation to deliver happiness. It is the right to pursue happiness: to start a business, to choose your occupation, to risk your capital, and to reap the rewards or absorb the losses of your own decisions. Although the SEC did not exist during the earlier parts of American history, the ideals that underpinned America’s foundation should continue to guide how we think about opportunity, accountability, and the proper limits of government action.