Common Law and Natural Law in America

Common Law and Natural Law in America PDF Author: Andrew Forsyth
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110847697X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 173

Get Book Here

Book Description
Presents an ambitious narrative and fresh re-assessment of common law and natural law's varied interactions in America, 1630 to 1930.

Common Law and Natural Law in America

Common Law and Natural Law in America PDF Author: Andrew Forsyth
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110847697X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 173

Get Book Here

Book Description
Presents an ambitious narrative and fresh re-assessment of common law and natural law's varied interactions in America, 1630 to 1930.

The Decline of Natural Law

The Decline of Natural Law PDF Author: Stuart Banner
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197556493
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Get Book Here

Book Description
The law of nature -- The common law -- The adoption of written constitutions -- The separation of law and religion -- The explosion in law publishing -- The two-sidedness of natural law -- The decline of natural law and custom --Substitutes for natural law -- Echoes of natural law.

Natural Law in Court

Natural Law in Court PDF Author: R. H. Helmholz
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674504615
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 285

Get Book Here

Book Description
The theory of natural law grounds human laws in the universal truths of God’s creation. Until very recently, lawyers in the Western tradition studied natural law as part of their training, and the task of the judicial system was to put its tenets into concrete form, building an edifice of positive law on natural law’s foundations. Although much has been written about natural law in theory, surprisingly little has been said about how it has shaped legal practice. Natural Law in Court asks how lawyers and judges made and interpreted natural law arguments in England, Europe, and the United States, from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the American Civil War. R. H. Helmholz sees a remarkable consistency in how English, Continental, and early American jurisprudence understood and applied natural law in cases ranging from family law and inheritance to criminal and commercial law. Despite differences in their judicial systems, natural law was treated across the board as the source of positive law, not its rival. The idea that no person should be condemned without a day in court, or that penalties should be proportional to the crime committed, or that self-preservation confers the right to protect oneself against attacks are valuable legal rules that originate in natural law. From a historical perspective, Helmholz concludes, natural law has advanced the cause of justice.

Common-law Liberty

Common-law Liberty PDF Author: James Reist Stoner
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 230

Get Book Here

Book Description
In an ere as morally confused as ours, Stoner argues, we at least ought to know what we've abandoned or suppressed in the name of judicial activism and the modern rights-oriented Constitution. Having lost our way, perhaps the common law, in its original sense, provides a way back, a viable alternative to the debilitating relativism of our current age.

Law in America

Law in America PDF Author: Lawrence M. Friedman
Publisher: Modern Library
ISBN: 0812972856
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Get Book Here

Book Description
Throughout America’s history, our laws have been a reflection of who we are, of what we value, of who has control. They embody our society’s genetic code. In the masterful hands of the subject’s greatest living historian, the story of the evolution of our laws serves to lay bare the deciding struggles over power and justice that have shaped this country from its birth pangs to the present. Law in America is a supreme example of the historian’s art, its brevity a testament to the great elegance and wit of its composition.

A Common Law Theory of Judicial Review

A Common Law Theory of Judicial Review PDF Author: W. J. Waluchow
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139462814
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 7

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this study, W. J. Waluchow argues that debates between defenders and critics of constitutional bills of rights presuppose that constitutions are more or less rigid entities. Within such a conception, constitutions aspire to establish stable, fixed points of agreement and pre-commitment, which defenders consider to be possible and desirable, while critics deem impossible and undesirable. Drawing on reflections about the nature of law, constitutions, the common law, and what it is to be a democratic representative, Waluchow urges a different theory of bills of rights that is flexible and adaptable. Adopting such a theory enables one not only to answer to critics' most serious challenges, but also to appreciate the role that a bill of rights, interpreted and enforced by unelected judges, can sensibly play in a constitutional democracy.

Common Law & Natural Rights

Common Law & Natural Rights PDF Author: Ruben Alvarado
Publisher: WordBridge Publishing
ISBN: 9076660085
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 160

Get Book Here

Book Description
Common law is explored as the alternative to natural rights as a means of restricting state power. The separation of powers is weighed in the balance and found wanting as a brake on state power. The underlying root of this inability is discovered in the philosophy of natural rights. Natural rights gave birth to the separation of powers, but neither the former nor the latter has been able to restrain government. This failure is highlighted in detail, and the alternative means to the same end, the common law, is brought to the fore.

Common Law Theory

Common Law Theory PDF Author: Douglas E. Edlin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521176156
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 262

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this book, legal scholars, philosophers, historians, and political scientists from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States analyze the common law through three of its classic themes: rules, reasoning, and constitutionalism. Their essays, specially commissioned for this volume, provide an opportunity for thinkers from different jurisdictions and disciplines to talk to each other and to their wider audience within and beyond the common law world. This book allows scholars and students to consider how these themes and concepts relate to one another. It will initiate and sustain a more inclusive and well-informed theoretical discussion of the common law's method, process, and structure. It will be valuable to lawyers, philosophers, political scientists, and historians interested in constitutional law, comparative law, judicial process, legal theory, law and society, legal history, separation of powers, democratic theory, political philosophy, the courts, and the relationship of the common law tradition to other legal systems of the world.

From Human Dignity to Natural Law

From Human Dignity to Natural Law PDF Author: Richard Berquist
Publisher: Catholic University of America Press
ISBN: 0813232422
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Get Book Here

Book Description
From Human Dignity to Natural Law shows how the whole of the natural law, as understood in the Aristotelian Thomistic tradition, is contained implicitly in human dignity. Human dignity means existing for one’s own good (the common good as well as one’s individual good), and not as a mere means to an alien good. But what is the true human good? This question is answered with a careful analysis of Aristotle’s definition of happiness. The natural law can then be understood as the precepts that guide us in achieving happiness. To show that human dignity is a reality in the nature of things and not a mere human invention, it is necessary to show that human beings exist by nature for the achievement of the properly human good in which happiness is found. This implies finality in nature. Since contemporary natural science does not recognize final causality, the book explains why living things, as least, must exist for a purpose and why the scientific method, as currently understood, is not able to deal with this question. These reflections will also enable us to respond to a common criticism of natural law theory: that it attempts to derive statements of what ought to be from statements about what is. After defining the natural law and relating it to human or positive law, Richard Berquist considers Aquinas’s formulation of the first principle of the natural law. It then discusses the love commandments to love God above all things and to love one’s neighbor as oneself as the first precepts of the natural law. Subsequent chapters are devoted to clarifying and defending natural law precepts concerned with the life issues, with sexual morality and marriage, and with fundamental natural rights. From Human Dignity to Natural Law concludes with a discussion of alternatives to the natural law.

"Partly Laws Common to All Mankind"

Author: Jeremy Waldron
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300148658
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Get Book Here

Book Description
Should judges in United States courts be permitted to cite foreign laws in their rulings? In this book Jeremy Waldron explores some ideas in jurisprudence and legal theory that could underlie the Supreme Court's occasional recourse to foreign law, especially in constitutional cases. He argues that every society is governed not only by its own laws but partly also by laws common to all mankind (ius gentium). But he takes the unique step of arguing that this common law is not natural law but a grounded consensus among all nations. The idea of such a consensus will become increasingly important in jurisprudence and public affairs as the world becomes more globalized.