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Full-Text Articles in Legal History
Reason To Ratify: The Influence Of John Locke's Religious Beliefs On The Creation And Adoption Of The United States Constitution, David L. Wardle
Reason To Ratify: The Influence Of John Locke's Religious Beliefs On The Creation And Adoption Of The United States Constitution, David L. Wardle
Seattle University Law Review
The pervasive influence of Lockean religious convictions motivated the framers of the Constitution to establish a new form of government, provided the theoretical basis for the document itself, and inspired its popular ratification. Part II will lay the groundwork for this thesis by outlining Locke's life and sources of his religious beliefs. Part III will undertake a more substantive examination of Locke's opinions and the writings that memorialized them. Establishing how Lockean ideas of natural law, social contract, and reason are related to the inspiration, drafting, and acceptance of the Constitution takes place in Part IV, before the article's conclusion …
Judicial Conscience And Natural Rights: A Reply To Professor Ledewitz, Harry V. Jaffa
Judicial Conscience And Natural Rights: A Reply To Professor Ledewitz, Harry V. Jaffa
Seattle University Law Review
In our Spring 1987 issue, Professor Jaffa authored an essay in which he posited that the fundamental principles of equality and other tenets of natural law expressed in the Declaration of Independence were originally intended to be the principles of the Constitution of 1787 Professor Jaffa asserted that while the Framers believed in the "law of nature and nature's God," many contemporary constitutional thinkers, including fellow conservatives Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Attorney General Edwin Meese, do not. Thus, Jaffa argued, those conservatives "who today most aggressively appeal to the doctrine of original intent are among its most resolute antagonists." …
The Implicit Teaching Of Utopian Speculations: Rousseau's Contribution To The Natural Law Tradition, Thomas E. Carbonneau
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 …