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Morningside Institute Seminars on Natural Law

The Morningside Institute will host two seminars on natural law, on March 22 and 29, at Columbia Law School. See below for details:

Natural Law: Aquinas, Locke, and the Moral Foundations of America

From the Declaration of Independence to Letter from Birmingham Jail, Americans have appealed to the natural law as the foundation of political action and justice in our society. Today, however, the natural law is widely contested and rejected by some as partisan or dangerous. In this seminar series, Philip Hamburger (Columbia) and Nathaniel Peters (Morningside) will explore Thomas Aquinas’s and John Locke’s conceptions of the natural law and how they might help us understand the moral foundations of twenty-first century America.

Part I of this seminar will meet from 6:00 PM-7:30 PM on March 22, 2023 in Case Lounge, 7th floor of main law school building, Jerome Greene Hall (435 W. 116th St). Due to policies at the law school, you must register to attend.

Part II of this seminar will meet from 6:00 PM-7:30 PM on March 29, 2023 in Room 416 of William and June Warren Hall on Amsterdan Avenue. Due to policies at the law school, you must register to attend.

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Anderson, “The Declaration of Independence and God: Self-Evident Truths in American Law”

In October, Cambridge University Press will release “The Declaration of Independence and God: Self-Evident Truths in American Law” by Owen Anderson (Arizona State University). The publisher’s description follows:

“Self-evident truths” was a profound concept used by the drafters of the American Declaration of Independence to insist on their rights and freedom from oppressive government. How did this Enlightenment notion of self-evident human rights come to be used in this historic document and what is its true meaning? In The Declaration of Independence and God, Owen Anderson traces the concept of a self-evident creator through America’s legal history. Starting from the Declaration of Independence, Anderson considers both challenges to belief in God from thinkers like Thomas Paine and American Darwinists, as well as modifications to the concept of God by theologians like Charles Finney and Paul Tillich. Combining history, philosophy, and law in a unique focus, this book opens exciting new avenues for the study of America’s legal history.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami · 2 Comments

Rakove Reviews Tsesis on the Declaration of Independence

I have not read Alexander Tsesis’s new book about the Declaration of Independence.  From this review by Jack Rakove, though, it appears that Professor Tsesis makes some “powerful moral claims” about the nature and scope of the “self-evident” “truth[]” “that all men are created equal.”  I have always been struck by the powerful religious text grounding the various principles enunciated in the Declaration, but at a quick glance, it does not seem that Professor Tsesis makes very much of this (though perhaps there are portions of the book where this text is discussed).  He does (again, according to Professor Rakove’s review) appear to advance the claim that the Constitution needs to be amended and updated to reflect a core egalitarian creed that he reads into the Declaration.  Professor Rakove has this to say:

In short, Tsesis collapses into the Declaration a host of claims that text and context simply cannot support, assigning to it qualities and purposes it was not originally intended or understood to possess. His most basic misunderstanding goes to the great equality principle that Jefferson condensed into “all men are created equal.” Americans have long read that to mean that we are or should become equal to one another as citizens. That, in effect, is how we have democratized the Constitution since 1776—as Tsesis ably demonstrates. When inequalities are perceived and become objectionable, we cite the Declaration in support of our leveling claims. Often we do that not merely because the inequalities are unjust in themselves, but also because we believe that the Declaration instructs us to oppose them. But the intended meaning of 1776 was never about inequality within American society. It was instead a statement that Americans as a people, as a collective whole, were equally endowed with other peoples with the right to oppose tyranny, to “alter and abolish” unjust governments and establish new governments in their stead. This form of equality means little to us now, but in the revolutionary circumstances of 1776, that was the equality Americans needed to assert.