scholarly journals Alexander Hamilton on Slavery

2004 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael D. Chan
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
The State ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Alexander Hamilton ◽  
Traditional Natural ◽  
Political Principles

This article seeks to refute the prevailing scholarly view that Hamilton, like the Founders generally, lacked a deep concern about slavery. The first part examines Hamilton's political principles and shows that they were not Hobbesian but consistent with the views of more traditional natural law theorists. Accordingly, Hamilton understood that the natural rights of man imposed a corresponding duty to end slavery. The second part examines Hamilton's endorsement of a compensated emancipation, his opinions of the Constitution, his conduct of American foreign policy, his involvement in the state abolition societies, and his economic policies to demonstrate that ending slavery was in fact one of his abiding concerns.

On American Values, Unalienable Rights, and Human Rights: Some Reflections on the Pompeo Commission

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathias Risse
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Economic Rights ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
American Values ◽  
Natural Law Theory ◽  
Per Se ◽  
The U.S

AbstractIn July 2019, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo launched a Commission on Unalienable Rights, charged with a reexamination of the scope and nature of human rights–based claims. From his statements, it seems that Pompeo hopes the commission will substantiate—by appeal to the U.S. Declaration of Independence and to natural law theory—three key conservative ideas: (1) that there is too much human rights proliferation, and once we get things right, social and economic rights as well as gender emancipation and reproductive rights will no longer register as human rights; (2) that religious liberties should be strengthened under the human rights umbrella; and (3) that the unalienable rights that should guide American foreign policy neither need nor benefit from any international oversight. I aim to show that despite Pompeo's framing, the Declaration of Independence, per se, is of no help with any of this, whereas evoking natural law is only helpful in ways that reveal its own limitations as a foundation for both human rights and foreign policy in our interconnected age.

Kant’s Naturrecht Feyerabend, Achenwall and the Role of the State

Kant Yearbook ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-71
Author(s):  
Mike L. Gregory
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Sustained Attention ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Law System ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
The Will ◽  
Subjective Rights

Abstract Kant’s Naturrecht Feyerabend has recently gained more sustained attention for its role in clarifying Kant’s published positions in political philosophy. However, too little attention has been given to the lecture’s relation to Gottfried Achenwall, whose book was the textbook for the course. In this paper, I will examine how Kant rejected and transforms Achenwall’s natural law system in the Feyerabend Lectures. Specifically, I will argue that Kant problematizes Achenwall’s foundational notion of a divine juridical state which opens up a normative gap between objective law (prohibitions, prescriptions and permissions) and subjective rights (moral capacities). In the absence of a divine sovereign, formal natural law is unable to justify subjective natural rights in the state of nature. In the Feyerabend Lectures, Kant, in order to close this gap, replaces the divine will with the “will of society”, making the state necessary for the possibility of rights.

Economic culture and foreign policy: the cognitive analysis of economic policy making

1987 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Egon Rohrlich
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International System ◽  
The State ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Foreign Economic Policy ◽  
Economic Culture ◽  
Policy Objectives ◽  
Distribution Of Power ◽  
Hans Morgenthau

Political scientists researching economic foreign policy have generally taken one of two analytic approaches. The first is based on realpolitik, the traditional application of “high” politics to the “low” politics of economics. This approach considers economics subordinate to politics. The concept of the national interest dominates; the pursuit of power—what enables the state to achieve its goals of security, welfare, and other societal values—is seen to underlie most actions. The study of foreign economic policy is thus an analysis of the distribution of power among states within the international system. By understanding a state's sources of strength and areas of vulnerability in relation to other states, the analyst will better understand the creation of foreign policy. Hans Morgenthau notes that while states may sometimes pursue economic policies for their own sake (in which case they should take little interest in their success), the more important economic policies they will favor are instruments of political power.Stephen Krasner views the state as an autonomously motivated actor, able to guide policy in pursuit of state priorities while resisting interest groups and ideologies. According to this “power theory”, the state tries to increase its economic competitiveness, ensure security of material needs, and promote its broad foreign-policy objectives. Economic policy is for the most part subordinate to and best explained by state priorities and prerogatives. Robert Tucker, Klaus Knorr, Robert Gilpin and others have also adopted this framework.

US human rights panel will have widespread impact

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Religious Liberty ◽  
The Body ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Lgbt Issues

Significance Pompeo launched the commission on July 8, charging it with providing “fresh thinking” on human rights where concepts of rights have “departed from our nation’s founding principles of natural law and natural rights”. However, the body’s precise activities are left vague. The commission is also widely interpreted as an effort to infuse the current framework for human rights in US foreign policy with more conservative social values. Impacts The commission could be a flashpoint in budget negotiations down to September/October and beyond. The body will likely reinterpret rights more conservatively, including on abortion and LGBT issues, and elevate religious liberty. The pro-Israel lobby will welcome the commission, partly as the UN has been criticised as being ‘anti-Israel’.

TOWARD A THEORY OF EMPIRICAL NATURAL RIGHTS

2005 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Hasnas
Keyword(s):  
John Locke ◽  
The State ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Robert Nozick ◽  
Close Approximation ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Limited Government ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
Traditional Natural

Natural rights theorists such as John Locke and Robert Nozick provide arguments for limited government that are grounded on the individual's possession of natural rights to life, liberty, and property. Resting on natural rights, such arguments can be no more persuasive than the underlying arguments for the existence of such rights, which are notoriously weak. In this article, John Hasnas offers an alternative conception of natural rights, “empirical natural rights,” that are not beset by the objections typically raised against traditional natural rights. Empirical natural rights are rights that evolve in the state of nature rather than those that individuals are antecedently endowed with in that state. Professor Hasnas argues that empirical natural rights are true natural rights, that is, pre-political rights with natural grounds that can be possessed in the state of nature, and that, when taken together, they form a close approximation of the Lockean rights to life, liberty, and property. He furthers argues that empirical natural rights are normatively well-grounded because respecting them is productive of social peace, which possesses instrumental moral value regardless of one's conception inherent value. Professor Hasnas thus offers his conception of rights as solved problems as an alternative and potentially more secure footing for the traditional natural rights arguments for limited government associated with Locke and Nozick.

Alexander Hamilton and the British Orientation of American Foreign Policy, 1783-1803.

1972 ◽  
Vol 87 (3) ◽  
pp. 460
Author(s):  
Jacob E. Cooke ◽  
Helene Johnson Looze ◽  
Jerald A. Combs
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Alexander Hamilton

Fundamental Human Rights and the Military Regime in Nigeria: What did the Courts Say?

1971 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. O. Aihe
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Positive Law ◽  
Moral Force ◽  
Traditional Natural ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Military

The rights of the individual in the society have been conceived as natural rights—which in the modern state have no more than a moral force. In the context of a modern state which asserts absolute powers within its borders, it appears idle to suggest as in the traditional natural law theories that there is anything like a law of nature existing independently of and overriding positive law.

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