How much case law ties back to the Declaration of Independence without an explicit anchor in the Constitution?
I haven’t heard of any.
I don’t say it isn’t a noble, even godly idea. It just ran into problems once the task of composing a Constitution fell at hand. That Constitution had some sin in it in the form of winks at chattel slavery; and Thomas Jefferson for one may have felt a little too conscience pinched to put something like that in.
The slavery issue is like this one ... in saying that those slaves were not property. They fall under those rights that cannot be taken away by government. It’s the same here ... these little ones are people whose rights cannot be taken away by government. We’ll do exactly what this Declaration of Independence says ... “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed ...”