The Decline of Natural Law

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Banner
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Rapid Growth ◽  
Legal Issues ◽  
Late 19Th Century ◽  
Long Term Trends ◽  
The Law ◽  
American Legal System

Before the late 19th century, natural law played an important role in the American legal system. Lawyers routinely used it in their arguments, and judges often relied upon it in their opinions. Today, by contrast, natural law plays virtually no role in the legal system. When natural law was part of a lawyer’s toolkit, lawyers thought of judges as finders of the law, but when natural law dropped out of the legal system, lawyers began thinking of judges as makers of the law instead. The Decline of Natural Law explores the causes and consequences of this change. It discusses the ways in which lawyers used natural law and why the concept seemed reasonable to them. It examines several long-term trends in legal thought that weakened the position of natural law, including the use of written constitutions, the gradual separation of the spheres of law and religion, the rapid growth of legal publishing, and the position of natural law in some of the 19th century’s most contested legal issues. It describes the profession’s rejection of natural law in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And it explores the ways in which the legal system responded to the absence of natural law.

The Common Law

2021 ◽  
pp. 46-68
Author(s):  
Stuart Banner
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Late 19Th Century ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law

This chapter discusses 18th- and 19th-century lawyers’ understanding of common law, the law found in court opinions. Today lawyers think of the common law as consisting of the opinions themselves, and they think of judges as making the law when they write the opinions. Before the late 19th century, by contrast, lawyers believed that the common law had an existence independent of court opinions, and that the opinions were merely evidence of the law rather than the law itself. Common law was understood in large part as natural law applied to specific situations. It was considered to be something found, not made, by judges.

scholarly journals Inhabiting Relingos: Horizontal Harlem, Told Vertically

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Huxley
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Rapid Growth ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Late 19Th Century ◽  
Rich Variety ◽  
Academic Scholarship ◽  
Cultural Renaissance ◽  
American Author ◽  
Definition Of

 From the period of its development during the late 19th century, Harlem has experienced rapid growth, both spatially and aesthetically. A rich variety of literature has emerged, and continues to emerge, from its diverse and multicultural scene, prompting a new critical approach in academic scholarship. This thesis explores the transnational impact of Harlem, from the emergence of its cultural renaissance to its contemporary aesthetic presence. Specifically, it will consider the recently published work of Latin-American author Valeria Luiselli, discussing the transnational dimensions of her novel, and the re-definition of Harlem as a space without aesthetic or spatial boundaries.

The Adoption of Written Constitutions

2021 ◽  
pp. 71-95
Author(s):  
Stuart Banner
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Legal Tradition ◽  
System P ◽  
Late 18Th Century ◽  
Constitutional Thought

This chapter traces the effect of 19th-century constitutional thought on the decline of natural law. Written constitutions were an American innovation with no direct parallel in the English legal tradition. Natural law had long been understood as a constraint on legislation, but constitutions served the same function, which raised the question whether American judges had the authority to invalidate legislation that conflicted with natural principles rather than written constitutional text. In the course of this debate, American lawyers voiced their first sustained critiques of the use of natural law within the legal system. The adoption of written constitutions in the late 18th century thus lay the groundwork for the eventual disappearance of natural law from the legal system.

scholarly journals Contrasting differences in identity and agency between narrative and autopoietic systems

2013 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nico Buitendag
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Narrative Identity ◽  
Niklas Luhmann ◽  
Autopoietic Systems ◽  
Identity And Agency ◽  
Role Players ◽  
The Law ◽  
Legal Subjects

The article aims at contrasting the autopoietic understanding of an individual and her or his actions as described by Niklas Luhmann with Paul Ricoeur’s notion of narrative identity, focusing on people as legal subjects. The article assumes that when legal subjects necessitate ethical engagement and evaluation, the law could cease to deal with problems in a mere legalistic fashion but is allowed the freedom to appeal to norms of justice external to itself as in other natural law theories. Through narrative identity the deeds of role players are to be understood in greater complexity than what a self-referential legal system is comfortable in dealing with.

Black Labor and the American Legal System: Race, Work and the Law

1986 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 442
Author(s):  
Tim Kaye ◽  
Herbert Hill ◽  
Christopher L. Tomlins ◽  
Michael Poole
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Black Labor ◽  
The Law ◽  
American Legal System

The Repudiation of Rational Natural Law by National-Socialism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernst Fraenkel
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Third Reich

The chapter describes how the prerogative state was able to completely abolish the inviolability of the law. Since the doctrine of the inviolability of law is part of the heritage of rational Natural Law, it is argued, its explicit rejection in the legal system of the Third Reich raises the question of the whole attitude of National-Socialism toward Natural Law. The chapter describes how the repudiation of Natural Law was achieved and also the form this repudiation took. Despite the fact that Natural Law has been refuted time and again by political science, until the period when this text was written it had not yet lost its vitality entirely.

Echoes of Natural Law

2021 ◽  
pp. 222-250
Author(s):  
Stuart Banner
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Academic Interest ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law

This chapter examines the status of natural law in the legal system over the past century. In law schools, natural law never ceased to be a topic of study. This academic interest in natural law has had almost no effect on the working legal system, where natural law has been relied upon by only the most idiosyncratic of judges and lawyers. The history of our use of natural law has nevertheless continued to exert influence on the legal system, which still contains doctrines and practices that were once based on the law of nature.

Black Labor and the American Legal System. Vol. I: Race, Work, and the Law

1979 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 1180
Author(s):  
Carl M. Brauer ◽  
Herbert Hill
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Black Labor ◽  
The Law ◽  
American Legal System
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