Natural Law Commons^™

Guilt History: Benjamin's Fragment "Capitalism As Religion", Werner Hamacher

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Legislating Education: Kant, Hegel, And Benjamin On "Pedagogical Violence", Eva Geulen

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Foundations Of Practical Reason Revisited, John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

"One's investigations, reflections and communications are actions. Sometimes they are simply spontaneous, but very often, as with other kinds of action, one needs to opt into them by deliberation, choice and continued effort, all of which make noticeable one's responsiveness to opportunities. This paper revisits some main elements in that responsiveness."

Hegel's Anti-Spinozism: The Transition To Subjective Logic And The End Of Classical Metaphysics, George Di Giovanni

Cardozo Public Law, Policy & Ethics Journal

No abstract provided.

Saving The Constitution: Lincoln, Secession, And The Price Of Union, Craig S. Lerner

Michigan Law Review

The year is 1860. After failing to obtain, as he had expected, the Democratic Party nomination for President at its Charleston convention, Stephen Douglas abandons his candidacy. In the ensuing election, Democrat John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky edges Republican Abraham Lincoln. The official platform of the Democratic Party includes endorsement of the Dred Scott decision, slavery's expansion in the federal territories, rigorous enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act, and elimination of the tariff. Abolitionists in New England are inconsolable. For several years, Henry Lloyd Garrison had advocated Northern secession, denouncing the Constitution as a "union with slaveholders," and "a covenant …

Accommodating The Unauthorized Use Of Copyrighted Works For Religious Purposes Under The Fair Use Doctrine And Copyright Act § 110(3), Thomas F. Cotter

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Market Fundamentalism And The Trips Agreement, Thomas F. Cotter

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Helping Enact Unjust Laws Without Complicity In Injustice, John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

The form of enactments must be distinguished from their legal meaning (their "juridical effect"), that is, from the propositions of law which those enactments, properly interpreted, make legally valid. This distinction makes it possible, and rationally necessary, to conclude that, in certain contexts, a certain statute which declares or textually implies that some abortions are legally permitted (but others prohibited) is not apermissive law within the meaning of the principle, assumed in this article to be true, that permissive abortion laws are intrinsically unjust and may never be voted for. A permissive statute, in that sense, is one which has …

Natural Law, Civil Law, And International Law In Spinoza, Manfred Walther

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Caesar, Succession, And The Chastisement Of Rulers, Patrick Martin, John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

Julius Caesar's reign as dictator and praefectus morum for life ended with his assassination in 44 B.C. It was preceded by over four hundred years of consular rule, a system of executive government by two consuls, elected for a one-year term. Consular government began in 509 B.C., ending the hundred-year rule of the Tarquin kings. Three works printed in 1594 recalled for English readers the overthrow of the Tarquins and the establishing of consular government. One was dedicated to the Earl of Essex. Another, by William Shakespeare, was dedicated to Essex's close companion, the Earl of Southampton. The third work …

Nietzsche Niëzky Nijinsky, C. W. Maris Van Sandelingenambacht

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Law And What I Truly Should Decide, John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

Suppose we tried to think about law without trying first to describe it or to work out what the concept of it is. Suppose we asked instead whether, and if so why, and when, we-or more precisely each one of us-should favor introducing, having, endorsing, maintaining, complying with and enforcing it. We would be trying to think about law, about something not limited to our own time and town, but as something that people of any time and place of which we are aware would, as we can understand, have the same or similar need for and reasons to comply …

Editorial Introduction, Gerard V. Bradley, John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

This Article is a forward to nine articles from the 2001 Symposium on Natural Law and Human Fulfillment, held at Notre Dame Law School. The Symposium was held to mark the 35th anniversary of the publication of Germain Grisez's "The First Principle of Practical Reason: A Commentary on the Summa Theologiae."

On The Incoherence Of Legal Positivism, John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

Legal positivism is an incoherent intellectual enterprise. It sets itself an explanatory task which it makes itself incapable of carrying through. In the result it offers its students purported and invalid derivations of ought from is.

In this brief Essay I note various features of legal positivism and its history, before trying to identify this incoherence at its heart. I do not mean to renege on my belief that reflections on law and legal theory are best carried forward without reference to unstable and parasitic academic categories, or labels, such as "positivism" (or "liberalism" or "conservatism," etc.). I use the …

Natural Law And The Ethics Of Discourse, John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

This essay argues that Plato's critical analysis of the ethics of discourse is superior to Habermas', and more generally that Habermas has no sufficient reason to propose or suppose the philosophical superiority of "modernity." The failure of Hume and Kant and much modern philosophy to understand the concept and content of reasons for action underlies Habermas' attempted distinction between ethics and morality, and Rawls' concept of public reason. A proper study of discourse also yields a metaphysics of the person, and thus reinforces the ethics.

Natural Law And Birthright Citizenship In Calvin's Case (1608), Polly J. Price

Faculty Articles

The roots of United States conceptions of birthright citizenship lie deep in England's medieval past. This Article explores Calvin's Case (1608) and the early modem common-law mind that first articulated a theoretical basis for territorial birthright citizenship. Involving all the important English judges of the day, Calvin's Case addressed the question of whether persons born in Scotland, following the descent of the English crown to the Scottish King James VI in 1603, would be considered "subjects" in England. Calvin's Case determined that all persons born within any territory held by the King of England were to enjoy the benefits of …

Communicative Power And The Concept Of Law, Ulrich K. Preub

Cardozo Law Review

The idea that the law was founded on the self-interest and the will of rational individuals was first developed and proven in the social contract theories of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. These theorists reacted-admittedly, in extremely different ways-to the problem of finding a collective basis in a world which had lost its common religious fundaments and the economic basis of feudal communal life. The European world of the seventeenth century had fallen apart. The universalism of the catholic world had been replaced by a plurality of subjective worldviews championed by individuals, groups, sects, and new social entities. How could one …

Unjust Laws In A Democratic Society: Some Philosophical And Theological Reflections, John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

Largely rejecting Christian faith and every other recognition of human dependence upon transcendent intelligence and will, our societies are diverging further and further from every type of Christian commonwealth or "civilization of love." In such a situation, one must ask whether Christians involved in politics can have a reasonable expectation of shaping the main lines of public policy and law. Can they expect to do any more than, sometimes, help limit the damage and, always, bear witness to the faith and to the moral truths which are taught by faith?

Freedom And Criminal Responsibility In The Age Of Pound: An Essay On Criminal Justice, Thomas A. Green

Articles

The concept of freedom has two main aspects: political liberty and freedom of the will. I am concerned here with the latter, although - as these two aspects of freedom are not entirely unrelated to each other - I shall touch also on the former. Enough has been written from a philosophical perspective on the relationship between free will and the law that it is not easy to justify yet another such undertaking. But there may still be room for some informal observations on the manner in which doubts about the concept of freedom of the will affected discussion of …

Liberalism And Natural Law Theory, John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

I shall argue, in the course of this lecture, that the title I gave myself is a bad one, one that sets a bad example. "Liberalism," like "conservatism" and "socialism," is too local, contingent and shifting a term to deserve a place in a general theory of society, politics, government and law. So I had better say at once which proposition or set of propositions I, on this occasion, was gesturing towards with the word "liberalism," out of all the many propositions, often conflicting, which have been called "liberal." What I had in mind was the thesis that government and …

Morality And Legal Reasoning, Gerard V. Bradley

Journal Articles

Natural law has been derided by several generations of intellectuals as "nonsense on stilts" (Bentham) or a "brooding omni- presence in the sky" (Holmes). Nevertheless, the idea refuses to go away. For a long time natural law theory was the preserve of neo- Scholastic theologians and philosophers in Roman Catholic universities and seminaries. In a nice bit of irony, however, just as Catholic institutions have begun to secularize by adopting the norms and standards of prominent institutions such as Harvard, Oxford, and Princeton, defenders of natural law theory have suddenly popped up at just these establishments. Fully equipped with the …

Review Of The Province Of Legislation Determined: Legal Theory In Eighteenth-Century Britain, Thomas A. Green

Reviews

David Lieberman's lucid and sure-footed reinterpretationof late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century jurisprudence is original, thoughtful, analytically acute, and a pleasure to read. Lieberman argues that Bentham's law reform ideas must be viewed in relation to earlier (and contemporary) reform traditions. Bentham's views were more complex than the long-held myth would have it, partly because they were more derivative, at least in his early enterprises, combining as they did a reception of earlier notions with the novelty for which he is usually credited. Blackstone and Mansfield, on this account, were not the match stick figures they are sometimes made out to be; the …

The Iroquois Great Law Of Peace And The United States Constitution: How The Founding Fathers Ignored The Clan Mothers, Renée Jacobs

American Indian Law Review

No abstract provided.

Concluding Reflections, John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

A symposium to which one person contributes three extended papers is no unmixed pleasure for readers. This third contribution of mine will interest only those curious to see my response to other symposiasts' comments on my earlier efforts (in the symposium and elsewhere). To enable this curiosity to be satisfied as costlessly as possible, I divide these concluding reflections by authors rather than themes, though with priorities suggested by themes rather than authors.

Natural Law And Legal Reasoning, John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

Much academic theory about legal reasoning greatly exaggerates the extent to which reason can settle what is greater good or lesser evil, and minimizes the need for authoritative sources which, so far as they are clear and respect the few absolute moral rights and duties, are to be respected as the only rational basis for judicial reasoning and decision, in relation to the countless issues which do not directly involve those absolute rights and duties. A natural law theory in the classical tradition makes no pretense that natural reason can determine the one right answer to those countless questions which …

The Constitution's Accommodation Of Social Change, Philip A. Hamburger

Michigan Law Review

Did the framers and ratifiers of the United States Constitution think that changes in American society would require changes in the text or interpretation of the Constitution? If those who created the Constitution understood or even anticipated the possibility of major social alterations, how did they expect constitutional law - text and interpretation - to accommodate such developments?

The effect of social change upon constitutional law was an issue the framers and ratifiers frequently discussed. For example, when AntiFederalists complained of the Constitution's failure to protect the jury trial in civil cases, Federalists responded that a change of circumstances might, …

On Human Rights: The Use Of Human Right Precepts In U.S. History And The Right To An Effective Remedy In Domestic Courts, Jordan J. Paust

Michigan Journal of International Law

Early in the history of the United States, human rights, then often termed the "rights of man," were understood to be those natural, unalienable rights of all persons that no government on earth could deny - rights that are a part of law, whether written or unwritten, and that free and democratic governments are formed to further and to protect. As Alexander Hamilton recognized in 1775, "the sacred rights of mankind... are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature… and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power." Yet, as Hamilton must have known, …

Legal Enforcement Of "Duties To Oneself": Kant Vs. Neo-Kantians, John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

This Article considers writings by modern scholars including Rawls, Dworkin, and D.A.J. Richards on the topic of Kant's discussion of the neutrality principle and the harm principle.

Practical Principles, Moral Truth, And Ultimate Ends, John M. Finnis, Germain Grisez, Joseph Boyle

Journal Articles

The natural-law theory on which we have been working during the past twenty-five years has stimulated many critical responses. We have restated the theory in various works, not always calling attention to developments. This paper reformulates some parts of the theory, taking into account the criticisms of which we are aware.

The "Natural Law Tradition", John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

This "tradition of natural law theory" has three main features: First, critique and rejection of ethical scepticism, dogmatism and conventionalism; Second, clarification of the methodology of descriptive and explanatory social theories (e.g., political science, economics, jurisprudence .... ); Third, critique and rejection of aggregative conceptions of the right and the just (e.g., consequentialism, utilitarianism, wealth-maximization, "proportionalism"...).