Declaration Of Independence Is Illegal, Say British Lawyers

Was America founded on illegal grounds?

That's the argument advanced by a group of British lawyers who say the United States had no right to secede from Britain, according to the BBC.

American and British lawyers debated the issue at Philadelphia's Ben Franklin Hall on Tuesday.

According to the BBC, British lawyers argue that there are not and never were legal grounds to let a group of citizens establish their own laws just because they wanted to. The American argument is that government can only be "by the consent of the people and there comes a point when allegiance is no longer required in face of tyranny."

Foreign Policy muses, "In any case, wasn't breaking British laws kind of the point? Maybe next time we can debate the legality of colonizing other people's countries in the first place."

The debate winner was put to a vote and unsurprisingly, as Philebrity notes, the home team won.