Natural Law and the Antislavery Constitutional Tradition

Natural Law and the Antislavery Constitutional Tradition
Author: Justin Buckley Dyer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages:
Release: 2012-02-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1139505157

In Natural Law and the Antislavery Constitutional Tradition, Justin Buckley Dyer provides a succinct account of the development of American antislavery constitutionalism in the years preceding the Civil War. Within the context of recent revisionist scholarship, Dyer argues that the theoretical foundations of American constitutionalism - which he identifies with principles of natural law - were antagonistic to slavery. Still, the continued existence of slavery in the nineteenth century created a tension between practice and principle. In a series of case studies, Dyer reconstructs the constitutional arguments of prominent antislavery thinkers such as John Quincy Adams, John McLean, Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, who collectively sought to overcome the legacy of slavery by emphasizing the natural law foundations of American constitutionalism. What emerges is a convoluted understanding of American constitutional development that challenges traditional narratives of linear progress while highlighting the centrality of natural law to America's greatest constitutional crisis.

Natural Law and the Antislavery Constitutional Tradition

Natural Law and the Antislavery Constitutional Tradition
Author: Justin Buckley Dyer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2012-02-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107013631

Natural Law and the Antislavery Constitutional Tradition is a succinct account of the development of American antislavery constitutionalism in the years preceding the Civil War. In a series of case studies, Dyer reconstructs the arguments of prominent antislavery thinkers such as John Quincy Adams, John McLean, Abraham Lincoln, and Frederick Douglass. What emerges is a convoluted understanding of American constitutional development that emphasizes the centrality of natural law to America's greatest constitutional crisis.

Justice Accused

Justice Accused
Author: Robert M. Cover
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 1975-01-01
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780300032529

What should a judge do when he must hand down a ruling based on a law that he considers unjust or oppressive? This question is examined through a series of problems concerning unjust law that arose with respect to slavery in nineteenth-century America. "Cover's book is splendid in many ways. His legal history and legal philosophy are both first class. . . . This is, for a change, an interdisciplinary work that is a credit to both disciplines."--Ronald Dworkin, Times Literary Supplement "Scholars should be grateful to Cover for his often brilliant illumination of tensions created in judges by changing eighteenth- and nineteenth-century jurisprudential attitudes and legal standards. . . An exciting adventure in interdisciplinary history."--Harold M. Hyman, American Historical Review "A most articulate, sophisticated, and learned defense of legal formalism. . . Deserves and needs to be widely read."--Don Roper, Journal of American History "An excellent illustration of the way in which a burning moral issue relates to the American judicial process. The book thus has both historical value and a very immediate importance."--Edwards A. Stettner, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science "A really fine book, an important contribution to law and to history."--Louis H. Pollak

Two Cities

Two Cities
Author: Daniel S. Malachuk
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2016-10-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0700623027

Since the late eighteenth century the ideals of political democracy and individual flourishing have become so entangled that most people no longer differentiate them. The American Transcendentalists did. Two Cities is the first comprehensive account of the original but still underrated political thought of this movement, especially that of its three major authors: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Henry David Thoreau. For decades, Daniel S. Malachuk contends, readers have misinterpreted the Transcendentalists as worshipping democracy and secularizing personhood. Two Cities proves the opposite. Focusing on their major writings, Malachuk presents the Transcendentalists as wresting apart and thus clarifying democracy as a profane project and individuality as a sacred one. Building upon this basic insight, the book affirms many recent but discrete conclusions about the movement’s various contributions (especially to liberalism, environmentalism, and public religion) and shows that we will understand how these commitments hang together only when we “re-transcendentalize the Transcendentalists.” In five useful chapters—on the two-cities tradition within the history of liberalism, on the rival and subsequently dominant “overlap” theories of Lincoln and others, and on the unique contributions to two-cities thought by each of the major authors—Two Cities reintroduces readers to the Transcendentalists as among the most original and important contributors to American political thought.

The Decline of Natural Law

The Decline of Natural Law
Author: Stuart Banner
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2021
Genre: Common law
ISBN: 0197556493

The law of nature -- The common law -- The adoption of written constitutions -- The separation of law and religion -- The explosion in law publishing -- The two-sidedness of natural law -- The decline of natural law and custom --Substitutes for natural law -- Echoes of natural law.

Natural Law in Court

Natural Law in Court
Author: R. H. Helmholz
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2015-06-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674504585

Natural-law theory grounds human laws in universal truths of God’s creation. The task of the judicial system was to build an edifice of positive law on natural law’s foundations. R. H. Helmholz shows how lawyers and judges made and interpreted natural law arguments in the West, and concludes that historically it has advanced the cause of justice.

Black Natural Law

Black Natural Law
Author: Vincent W. Lloyd
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2016
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199362181

Black Natural Law offers a new way of understanding the African American political tradition. Iconoclastically attacking left (including James Baldwin and Audre Lorde), right (including Clarence Thomas and Ben Carson), and center (Barack Obama), Vincent William Lloyd charges that many Black leaders today embrace secular, white modes of political engagement, abandoning the deep connections between religious, philosophical, and political ideas that once animated Black politics. By telling the stories of Frederick Douglass, Anna Julia Cooper, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Martin Luther King, Jr., Lloyd shows how appeals to a higher law, or God's law, have long fueled Black political engagement. Such appeals do not seek to implement divine directives on earth; rather, they pose a challenge to the wisdom of the world, and they mobilize communities for collective action. Black natural law is deeply democratic: while charismatic leaders may provide the occasion for reflection and mobilization, all are capable of discerning the higher law using our human capacities for reason and emotion. At a time when continuing racial injustice poses a deep moral challenge, the most powerful intellectual resources in the struggle for justice have been abandoned. Black Natural Law recovers a rich tradition, and it examines just how this tradition was forgotten. A Black intellectual class emerged that was disconnected from social movement organizing and beholden to white interests. Appeals to higher law became politically impotent: overly rational or overly sentimental. Recovering the Black natural law tradition provides a powerful resource for confronting police violence, mass incarceration, and today's gross racial inequities. Black Natural Law will change the way we understand natural law, a topic central to the Western ethical and political tradition. While drawing particularly on African American resources, Black Natural Law speaks to all who seek politics animated by justice.

C. S. Lewis on Politics and the Natural Law

C. S. Lewis on Politics and the Natural Law
Author: Justin Buckley Dyer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 173
Release: 2016-08-08
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1107108241

This book shows how Lewis was interested in the truths and falsehoods about human nature and how these conceptions manifest themselves in the public square.

Slavery, Abortion, and the Politics of Constitutional Meaning

Slavery, Abortion, and the Politics of Constitutional Meaning
Author: Justin Buckley Dyer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2013-06-28
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1107328675

For the past forty years, prominent pro-life activists, judges and politicians have invoked the history and legacy of American slavery to elucidate aspects of contemporary abortion politics. As is often the case, many of these popular analogies have been imprecise, underdeveloped and historically simplistic. In Slavery, Abortion, and the Politics of Constitutional Meaning, Justin Buckley Dyer provides the first book-length scholarly treatment of the parallels between slavery and abortion in American constitutional development. In this fascinating and wide-ranging study, Dyer demonstrates that slavery and abortion really are historically, philosophically and legally intertwined in America. The nexus, however, is subtler and more nuanced than is often suggested, and the parallels involve deep principles of constitutionalism.