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Proclamation 10197 of April 30, 2021

Law Day, U.S.A., 2021

By the President of the United States of America

A Proclamation

In the many years I spent as a United States Senator and as Vice President, I logged hundreds of thousands of miles of travel, and had the opportunity to meet with foreign officials all over the world. Those experiences impressed upon me a truth about America: that what makes our Nation unique is the depth of our devotion to the rule of law.

Unlike so many of the Nations of the world, the United States wasn’t built around an ethnicity, religion, or tribe—it was built around common ideals. The rule of law is central to those ideals. It is what limits the abuse of power in our Nation, whether by an individual or a mob. It reflects President John Adams’ desire to establish “a government of laws and not of men.” It is how Thomas Paine distinguished us from the rest of the world—declaring that, while in other Nations, the king is law, “in America, the law is king.”

Many Nations around the world still struggle to capture what we have captured here in America—not only in the text of our founding documents, but in the character of our people: reverence for the law. That reverence is essential to our democracy. Without it, equality and justice cannot be advanced, human rights cannot be protected, democratic norms and values cannot be secured, and disagreements cannot be peaceably resolved. The rule of law has also been a critical vehicle for delivering the full promise of American democracy to all of our people, particularly those excluded in our Nation’s founding. Today, on Law Day, we rededicate ourselves to furthering that promise and strengthening those ideals, and we renew our commitment to ensure that every American’s constitutional rights are protected.

The theme of this year’s Law Day, “Advancing the Rule of Law Now,” is particularly fitting at this moment in our Nation’s history. Recently, we were again called to recognize that democracy is precious and fragile. We have witnessed grave threats to our democratic institutions and to the rule of law itself. These tragic events have taught us once again that when we are united, we can overcome the greatest challenges and move our country forward—but it takes a commitment to law over demagoguery, and the enforcement of law free from political interference, to do so.

Previous generations of Americans have lived through civil war, economic depressions, the rise of fascism, and world wars—and today, too many Americans continue to face pervasive racism, xenophobia, nativism, and other forms of intolerance. This year, the United States marks the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa, Oklahoma, race massacre, in which a mob of white residents attacked and killed between 100 and 300 Black residents and destroyed more than 1,000 homes and businesses in a thriving community known as Black Wall Street. Today, a century later, we still face chilling echoes of those threats to equality, justice, and the rule of law in the form of rising political extremism, white supremacy, and domestic terrorism.

My Administration is committed to advancing the rule of law within the United States so that everyone is ensured equal justice under the law, an equal place in our democracy, and the opportunity to fulfill their potential