It is an argument that many would think is long forgotten now that the two countries have one of the strongest international alliances in the world.
But that has not stopped a team of lawyers from the UK challenging the Declaration of Independence that released the United States from their colonial masters.
A debate took place this week in Philadelphia - the city where discussions began in 1776 and concluded in the separation on July 4 - between the two countries testing the validity of the document.
Michael Beloff, former president of Trinity College, Oxford, headed the UK team while David Levi, Dean of Duke University Law, spoke for the U.S. side.
They questioned various aspects of the declaration that founded America and led to the American Revolutionary War that ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1783.
It was claimed by the British that the declaration signed seven years earlier was in fact illegal.
The UK half of the discussion, which took place in the Ben Franklin Hall, said it was totally illegitimate and amounted to treason.
During the tongue-in-cheek argument, one of the British team said: 'There really is no need for you Yanks to keep picking at this ancient scab two centuries or so later.'
They argued that just because you want to start a new law, it doesn't mean you can just do such a thing.
In their brief, they said: 'What if Texas decided today it wanted to secede from the Union? Lincoln made the case against secession and he was right', the BBC reports.
In response, the Americans said: 'The English had used their own Declaration of Rights to depose James II and these acts were deemed completely lawful and justified.'
When it comes to taxing people without giving them representation, the British lawyers said that that was simply a wish of colonists.
They argued that they should be grateful that Britain protected them at great expense from the French during a seven-year war.
The Americans, however, said the Declaration of Independence was formed through 'Natural law', which the British said is an undefined concept.
They also said that the document was legal because there had been other movements of independence across the world that had been recognised in the UN charter.
At the end, a vote was held and it was decided that the U.S. would survive for another day and maintain its independence.
The Declaration, which helped establish the guiding principles of modern democracy, was written mainly by U.S. Founding Father Thomas Jefferson and is described by historians as 'America's birth certificate'.
It includes the then extraordinary assertion: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,' which paved the way for the French Revolution 13 years later.
It was signed by 56 delegates from the 13 American colonies that were at war with Britain.
The 200 first copies were made by printer John Dunlap that night and distributed throughout the colonies the following morning to be read aloud to the colonists and their militia.
BIRTH OF THE UNITED STATES
Writing the Declaration of Independence, 1776: From left, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson
Writing the Declaration of Independence, 1776: From left, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson
The American revolution was the political upheaval during the latter half of the 18th century.
Thirteen colonies in North America joined forces to break free from the British Empire - giving rise to the United States of America.
Rejecting the authority of Britain's Parliament to govern them from overseas, by 1774, each colony had set up a provisional Congress...
January 10, 1776: Thomas Paine published a booklet entitled Common Sense.
It outlined his vision of a government in which the people, through their elected representatives, would have supreme power.
Paine was the first to openly suggest independence from Britain.
Common Sense was read by many, including George Washington.
The work was to have a massive influence on Thomas Jefferson in his writing of the Declaration of Independence.
May: Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, receives Richard Henry Lee's resolution urging the colonies to become free and independent states.
June 11: Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston are appointed to a committee to draft a declaration of independence.
June 12-27: Jefferson is chosen to write the first draft, of which only a fragment exists. Jefferson's clean copy - the 'original Rough draught' - is reviewed by the committee. Both documents are in the manuscript collections of the Library of Congress.
July 1-4: Congress debates and revises the declaration.
July 2: Congress declares independence. John Hancock, President of the Congress and Charles Thomson, the secretary, signed the document.
July 4, 1776: The United States is officially born.
