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The Implicit Teaching Of Utopian Speculations: Rousseau's Contribution To The Natural Law Tradition, Thomas E. Carbonneau Jan 1979

The Implicit Teaching Of Utopian Speculations: Rousseau's Contribution To The Natural Law Tradition, Thomas E. Carbonneau

Journal Articles

This article examines the evolution of natural law theory and Jean-Jacques Rousseau's contribution to it. The thesis that emerges from that examination asserts that the tension between law in its natural and positive forms is endemic to the human condition. If any common ground is to be found between theories of positivistic and natural law, it lies in the realization that natural law doctrine is not gratuitous and subjective optimism nor idealism pure and simple. The fact that natural law doctrine can serve but a role of general guidance, that it is alien to the concrete, positivistic manifestations of law, …


Ideology And History, David F. Forte Jan 1979

Ideology And History, David F. Forte

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

I do not dispute the philosophical validity of the theory of natural rights. Indeed, I support much, if not most, of the principles embodied in that theory. What I wish to discuss is that to which Dr. Vieira claims to have limited his discussion, viz., the belief that history, specifically American constitutional history, provides a sufficient base to support a natural rights theory. His attempt to find historical support is an instructive example of how ideology can distort the data of history and cause it to be portrayed in a strange and unreal light. Beyond that, Vieira's historical method also …


The Implicit Teaching Of Utopian Speculations: Rousseau's Contribution To The Natural Law Tradition, Thomas E. Carbonneau Jan 1979

The Implicit Teaching Of Utopian Speculations: Rousseau's Contribution To The Natural Law Tradition, Thomas E. Carbonneau

Seattle University Law Review

Legal philosophers, especially of the positivist variety, traditionally have assumed that the proponents of natural law theory present too facile an answer to the vexed question of whether an unjust law can be said to exist when it is duly sanctioned by legal and political authority. If not disappointed by the answer itself, they have been most unhappy with the explanation that accompanies it and, indeed, are prepared to challenge the very foundations of a theory of law which pays so little heed—either empirically or in terms of pure logic—to the actual operations of existing legal systems. Kant initiated the …