American Interpretations of Natural Law: A Study in the History of Political Thought

ISBN-13: 9781412863278 / Angielski / Miękka / 2016 / 274 str.

Benjamin Fletcher Wright; Sidney A. Pearson Jr

Opis

This book illustrates the deep roots of natural law doctrines in America's political culture. Originally published in 1931, the volume shows that American interpretations of natural law go to the philosophical heart of the American regime. The Declaration of Independence is the preeminent example of natural law in American political thought-it is the self-evident truth of American society.Benjamin Wright proposes that the decline of natural law as a guiding factor in American political behaviour is inevitable as America's democracy matures and broadens. What Wright also chronicled, inadvertently, was how the progressive critique of natural law has opened a rift between and among some of the ruling elites and large numbers of Americans who continue to accept it. Progressive elites who reject natural law do not share the same political culture as many of their fellow citizens.Wright's work is important because, as Leo Strauss and others have observed, the decline of natural law is a development that has not had a happy ending in other societies in the twentieth century. There is no reason to believe it will be different in the United States.

Spis treści

Contents

Introduction to the Transaction Edition, Sidney A. Pearson, Jr.

Preface

I introduction

II Divine Law in Early New England

III Colonial Importations

IV The Revolution

V The First Constitutions

VI The Framing and Ratification of the Federal Constitution

VII Controversial and Non-Systematic Theory since 1789
General Tendencies
Debates in the State Constitutional Conventions
The Slavery Controversy

VIII Systematic Studies of Politics

IX Constitutional Interpretation

X Critics and Defenders

XI Conclusion

Index

O autorze

Benjamin Fletcher Wright