Natural Law Commons^™

A Martin Luther King Jr. Amendment To The U.S. Constitution: Toward The Abolition Of Poverty, Theodore Walker

Perkins Faculty Research and Special Events

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. prescribed that we add an economic bill of rights to the U.S. Constitution. A King-Inspired bill of rights should include a constitutional amendment that enumerates a natural human right to be free from economic poverty, and appropriate enforcement legislation.

For the sake of abolishing slavery, the Thirteenth Amendment says:

(Section 1) Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

(Section 2) Congress shall have power to enforce this article by …

Grounding Human Rights In Natural Law, John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

Of the published reviews of Natural Law and Natural Rights, one of the most, and most enduringly, influential was Ernest Fortin's review-article "The New Rights Theory and the Natural Law" (1982). The present essay takes the occasion of that review's latest republication to respond to its main criticisms of the theory of natural law and natural or human rights that is articulated in Natural Law and Natural Rights. The response deals with a number of fundamental or strategically important issues: the freedom of thought and/or the intellectual autonomy and integrity of work within an intellectual tradition that overlaps with a …

International Law: Practical Authority, Global Justice, John Linarelli

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

International Obligation And The Theory Of Hypothetical Consent, Fernando R. Tesón

Scholarly Publications

In this article I make three related arguments. First, I argue that the traditional approach to the problem of international obligation is incomplete and much too simplistic. Drawing in part on the ideas of Ronald Dworkin, I suggest that rather than a question of fidelity to international law, the foundational problem is the determination of international law. Second, I consider and reject two theories of international obligation: the theory based on the concept of interdependence and the theory of actual consent of states. Third, I suggest a theory of international obligation based on human rights. This theory is drawn from …

Human Rights Bibliography, Igor L. Kavass

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

It would be a mistake to assume that the concept of human rights as an ethical precept is an invention of recent origin. The shelves of libraries throughout the world are filled with books which either endeavor to define the inalienable rights of individuals or record the sad history of their constant and relentless abuse. Many of the world's greatest literary creations, from the Greek drama onward, chronicle man's cruelty to man. What is more effective in evoking a feeling of indignation about the perversity of human misery and suffering than the unforgettable books of writers with such culturally and …