Natural Law, Natural Rights, and American Constitutionalism

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Classical & Medieval Sources of Natural Law

Aristotle

Plato

Cicero

On the Republic (De Republica)

On the Laws (De Legibus)

On Duties (De Officiis)

Thomas Aquinas

QUESTION 90: THE ESSENCE OF LAW

QUESTION 91: THE VARIOUS KINDS OF LAW

QUESTION 92: THE EFFECTS OF LAW

QUESTION 93: THE ETERNAL LAW

QUESTION 94: THE NATURAL LAW

Question 95: Human Law

Question 96: The Power of Human Law

Question 97: Change in Laws

Question 98 (Partial): The Old (Testament's) Law

Question 99 (Partial): The Precepts of the Old (Testament's) Law

QUESTION 100: THE MORAL PRECEPTS OF THE OLD (TESTAMENT'S) LAW

Question 101 (Partial): The Ceremonial Precepts in Themselves

Question 104 (Partial): The Judicial Precepts

Question 106 (Partial): The Law of the Gospel, Called the New Law, Considered in Itself

Question 107 (Partial): The New Law As Compared with the Old

Question 108 (Partial): Things That Are Contained in the New Law

Late Medieval Transformations

Dialogue on the Power of the Pope and the Emperor

A Short Discourse on Tyrannical Government

The Catholic Concordance

A Defense of Liberty Against Tyrants

Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (Excerpts)

Protestant Reformers

Commentary on Matt. 7:12, Whatever you would wish that they do to you (Huldreich Zwingli)

Is There Certitude in the Doctrines of Physics? (Philip Melanchthon)

On Law (Philip Melanchthon)

What Are the Causes of the Certitude of Doctrine? (Philip Melanchthon)

Temporal Authority (Martin Luther)

Summary of the Teaching of the Renewed Church (Philip Melanchthon)

How Christians Should Regard Moses (Martin Luther)

Institutes of the Christian Religion (John Calvin)

Against the Sabbatarians (Martin Luther)

Against the Antinomians (Martin Luther)

Richard Hooker

Chapter 1: The Cause of Writing This General Discourse

Chapter 2: Of That Law Which God Has Set for Himself

Chapter 3: The Law of Natural Agents

Chapter 5: The Law Whereby Man Is Directed to the Imitation of God

Chapter 6: Men’s Knowledge of That Law Which They Are to Observe

Chapter 7: Of Man’s Will

Chapter 8: Of the Way of Finding out Laws by Reason

Chapter 9: The Benefit of Keeping That Law Which Reason Teaches

Chapter 10: How Reason Does Lead Men to Make Human Laws

Chapter 11: Why God Has by Scripture Made Known Supernatural Laws

Chapter 12: Why So Many Natural Laws Are Set Down in Scripture

The Early Modern Liberal Roots of Natural Law

Institutes of Roman Law

Thomas Hobbes

The Citizen (De Cive)

Leviathan

John Locke

First Treatise of Government, "Of Government: Book I"

Second Treatise of Government, "Of Civil Government: Book II"

Natural Law and the Law of Nations

On Civil Law and Natural Law

Etymologies, or Origins

Human Law

On the Laws

Concerning the Certainty of Right in General

The Law of Nature and Nations (Excerpt)

Law of Nations

Montesquieu

The Spirit of Laws (excerpts)

Common Law and the Law of Reason

Magna Carta

Dr. Bonham's Case

English Bill of Rights

Of the Laws of England (William Blackstone)

The Declaration of Independence

Constitution of the United States

The Bill of Rights (of the United States)

Radical Whigs and Natural Rights

Discources Concerning Government (Excerpts)

Cato's Letters

Observations on Civil Liberty, Government, and the War with America (Excerpt)

A Discourse on the Love of Our Country

Natural Law and Natural Rights in the American Constitutional Tradition

Colonial Roots

Preface to the Frame of Government of Pennsylvania

The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved

Of the Countries Subject to the Laws of England; Of the Parliament (William Blackstone)

The Rights of British America

Common Sense

Declaration of Independence

Magna Carta

English Bill of Rights

Resolutions of the Continental Congress

Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress

Rough Draft of the Declaration of Independence

Virginia Declaration of Rights

The Declaration of Independence

Thomas Jefferson to Henry Lee

Thomas Jefferson to Roger Weightman

The Jubilee of the Constitution

Declaration of Sentiments from the Seneca Falls Convention

Speech on the Dred Scott Decision (Lincoln; excerpt)

The Influence of the Scottish Enlightenment

Of the Absolute Rights of Individuals (Blackstone)

Considerations on the Authority of the British Parliament (James Wilson)

Of Reasoning (Thomas Reid)

Lectures on Law (James Wilson)

Chisholm v. Georgia

Founding Era Constitution-Making

Pennsylvania Bill of Rights

Virginia Declaration of Rights

New Hampshire Bill of Rights

Modern Constitutionalism

On the Laws against Popery in Ireland

The Representation of the Commons in the Parliament

Reflections on the Revolution in France

Rights of Man

The Bill of Rights

Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle; excerpts)

Republic (Cicero; excerpt)

Laws (Cicero; excerpt)

Lycurgus (Plutarch; excerpts)

Summa Theologiae (Aquinas; excerpts)

Preface to the Frame of Government of Pennsylvania

A Letter Concerning Toleration (Locke; excerpts)

Second Treatise of Government (Locke; excerpt)

The Spirit of the Laws (Montesquieu; excerpts)

Of the Absolute Rights of Individuals (William Blackstone; excerpt)

The Anti-Federalist Papers, Brutus No. 2

An Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution (Webster; excerpts)

Precursors to the Bill of Rights in the States (excerpts)

The Bill of Rights

Abraham Lincoln

Speech at Peoria, IL

To Henry L. Pierce

Speech at Columbus, OH

Speech at Hartford, CT

Post-Civil War Amendments

13th Amendment

14th Amendment

15th Amendment

The U.S. Supreme Court and Natural Law

Of the Nature of Laws in General (William Blackstone)

Lectures on Law (James Wilson)

Chisholm v. Georgia

Calder v. Bull

Hepburn v. Griswold (The Legal Tender Cases; abridged)

The Slaughterhouse Cases

Griswold v. Connecticut

American Civil Rights Movements

Federalist 51

Lectures on Law (James Wilson)

Pierce v. Society of Sisters (U.S. Supreme Court)

Shelley v. Kraemer (U.S. Supreme Court)

Letter from a Birmingham Jail (Martin Luther King, Jr.)

Loving v. Virginia

Contemporary Natural Law Theory

New Natural Law Theory

The First Principle of Practical Reason: A Commentary on the Summa Theologiae

Public Good: The Specifically Political Common Good in Aquinas

Natural Law, God, Religion, and Human Fulfillment

The True Ultimate End of Human Beings: The Kingdom, Not God Alone

Critics of the Natural Law Tradition

Machiavelli

In What Mode Faith Should Be Kept by Princes

The Dictatorial Authority Did Good, and Not Harm, to the Roman Republic

To Use Fraud in Managing War Is a Glorious Thing, etc.

Dialogue on the Regime of Florence (Guicciardini)

The Reason of State (Botero)

Enlightenment Critics

Of the Origin of Government

Of the Original Contract

Some Farther Considerations with Regard to Justice

Dialogue Between A Savage and A Bachelor of Arts

Social Darwinism

Memorial Day Address ("The American Code")

Mind as a Social Factor

The Absurd Effort to Make the World Over

Purposes and Consequences

Evolution of the Race Problem

The Mores of the Present and the Future

The Influence of Darwinism on Philosophy

American Progressivism

New Nationalism

The New Freedom

The American Conception of Liberty

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Schenck v. United States

Abrams v. United States

Gitlow v. New York

Buck v. Bell

Legal Positivism

Dialogue between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of England (Thomas Hobbes)

The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (John Austin)

The Path of the Law (Oliver Wendell Holmes)

John Rawls

Justice As Fairness: Political, Not Metaphysical (Excerpts)

The Idea of Public Reason Revisited (excerpts)

Politics, Religion, and the Common Good: Interview with John Rawls

Classical & Medieval
Early Modern
American Constitutionalism
Contemporary
- New Natural Law Theory
Critics