As the United States of America marks 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, we rightly celebrate the extraordinary military victories and the impassioned rhetoric that shook empires. But the American experiment was never secured by declaration alone. Legitimacy cannot be seized. It must be earned, through credible and consistent commitment to the promises a nation makes.

And while we are no longer a scrappy group of colonies trying to prove our nationhood, we should never forget the painstaking efforts and foresight of our Founding Fathers that have enabled America to become the world power that it is today.

Paris, 1782–1783[1]

After eight years of war, the fighting was over but the terms of peace were not yet settled. Military victory at Yorktown had forced Britain to the negotiating table and, in the spring of 1782, talks opened in Paris to determine what American independence would actually mean in practice. John Jay, considered to be the primary architect of the terms with Britain, bartered the headline achievements of the resulting Treaty of Paris that are well known: British recognition of American sovereignty and territorial boundaries stretching to the Mississippi.

But the treaty’s concessions may have been its most far-sighted. Article Four guaranteed that creditors would face no lawful impediment to recovering debts contracted before the war. Article Five committed Congress to recommend that state legislatures restore confiscated loyalist property. Article Six prohibited any future seizures. These were promises that cut against the grain of popular sentiment—American states had no interest in repaying British merchants or returning land to the people they had just defeated—but Jay understood that a nation claiming its place among sovereign powers could not begin its existence by defaulting on its commitments. A country that honored its promises only when convenient was not a country that could command respect. If a nation’s promises meant nothing, neither did the independence it demanded.

The Court, 1789–1793[2]

Several years later, John Jay was appointed as the first Chief Justice of the United States to build out the nation’s judicial system when the Supreme Court was still an abstraction. For its first four years, the justices spent most of their time drafting procedural rules, admitting lawyers to the bar, and riding circuit across the country to hear cases in distant courtrooms.

In 1793, the Jay Court issued its landmark decision in Chisholm v. Georgia, in which the nation’s obligations were being put to the test. During the Revolution, a South Carolina merchant had sold supplies on credit to the state of Georgia. Georgia refused to pay — in part because the merchant was a British loyalist. After the merchant died, the executor of his estate, Alexander Chisholm, sued Georgia in federal court. Georgia refused even to appear, claiming that as a sovereign state it could not be haled before the bench by a private citizen. In a four-to-one decision, the Jay Court ruled against Georgia, holding that the Constitution granted federal courts jurisdiction over disputes involving the states’ obligations.

The backlash was swift and the decision was effectively overturned by constitutional amendments regarding enforcement of the ruling in the following years, but the principle at its core has persisted throughout American policy for nearly 250 years. The United States are accountable under federal law and the nation’s commitments are not optional.

London, 1794[3]

Notwithstanding the commitments John Jay had negotiated and defended in various roles, promises were still being broken on both sides of the Atlantic. Several American states maintained laws blocking repayment of prewar debts and continued confiscating loyalist property. Britain, citing this noncompliance, refused to abandon frontier forts it had agreed to vacate in 1783, and had seized nearly three hundred American merchant ships trading with the French West Indies. By 1794, the two nations were drifting toward war, born not from irreconcilable interests but from broken commitments.

John Jay was once again sent across the pond to negotiate. The resulting Jay Treaty was deeply unpopular at home but addressed the core failure head-on: both sides agreed to submit their disputes over wartime debts to joint arbitration commissions. The United States committed to making full compensation to British creditors where its own courts had failed to deliver it. After years of negotiation, Britain paid the United States roughly $11.6 million for damages to American shipping and the United States paid Britain approximately $2.6 million for unpaid prewar debts.

The treaty kept two nations out of a war that neither needed to fight. It established the principle that when commitments break down, the answer is not escalation but a return to the table, proving that expert statesmanship and honoring obligations could achieve what force alone never would.

The Lesson

Credibility is the foundation of sovereignty, and commitments kept, even unpopular or costly ones, build the trust that makes diplomacy possible, alliances durable, and democratic institutions legitimate. As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of our dear nation’s Declaration of Independence, we must remember that a nation’s power rests not on what it declares but on what it honors.

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Editor’s note: The author is an attorney in the New York office of Ropes & Gray LLP.

[1] See Definitive Treaty of Peace arts. I–VI, U.S.-Gr. Brit., Sept. 3, 1783, Nat’l Archives, https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/treaty-of-paris; Treaty of Paris, 1783, Off. of the Historian, U.S. Dep’t of State, https://history.state.gov/milestones/1776-1783/treaty (last visited Apr. 17, 2026); R. B. Bernstein, Inventing American Diplomacy, History Now (Fall 2009), Gilder Lehrman Inst. of Am. Hist., https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/essays/inventing-american-diplomacy; Greg Balan, The Treaty of Paris: The American Negotiators, Teaching American History (Sept. 5, 2023), https://teachingamericanhistory.org/the-treaty-of-paris-the-american-negotiators/; An American Delegation in Paris, Nat’l Archives Found., https://archivesfoundation.org/newsletter/american-delegation-in-paris/ (last visited Apr. 17, 2026); John Jay and the Treaty of Paris, John Jay Homestead, https://johnjayhomestead.org/wp-content/uploads/50ATREATY-OF-PARIS-HISTORICAL-ESSAY.pdf (last visited Apr. 17, 2026).

[2] See Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 U.S. 419 (1793); John Jay’s Opinion, Chisholm v. Georgia [18 Feb. 1793], Founders Online, Nat’l Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jay/01-05-02-0251; Chisholm v. Georgia, Fed. Jud. Ctr., https://www.fjc.gov/history/cases/cases-that-shaped-the-federal-courts/chisholm-v-georgia (last visited Apr. 17, 2026); The Supreme Court Decides in Chisholm v. Georgia, Nat’l Park Serv., https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/chisholm-v-georgia.htm (last visited Apr. 17, 2026).

[3] Treaty of Amity, Commerce and Navigation, U.S.-Gr. Brit., Nov. 19, 1794, 8 Stat. 116; John Jay’s Treaty, 1794–95, Off. of the Historian, U.S. Dep’t of State, https://history.state.gov/milestones/1784-1800/jay-treaty (last visited Apr. 17, 2026); Stuart Leibiger, The Jay Treaty, Bill of Rights Inst., https://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/the-jay-treaty/ (last visited Apr. 17, 2026); The Jay Treaty Commissions, 37 St. John’s L. Rev., https://scholarship.law.stjohns.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4345&context=lawreview (last visited Apr. 17, 2026); Anuj Kumar Vaksha, Jay Treaty 1794: The Treasure Trove for Principles of International Law on Protection of Foreign Investments, 16 U.S.-China L. Rev. 281 (2019), https://davidpublisher.com/Public/uploads/Contribute/5e01715114968.pdf.