The Law of Nature in the Declaration: The American Basis and Standard for Just Civil Law

 

The American Founders recognized the “Law of Nature and Nature’s God,” the universal moral law of mankind, in the United States’ Declaration of Independence as the moral and legal basis for creating a new, independent nation.  For this law served as the foundation of man’s natural rights and the limits of earthly power.  To the Founders, as to various historical thinkers, this basic moral law or “Golden Rule” found in man’s conscience and the Bible—that tells one to live honestly, love others, treat others with dignity and respect, harm no one, and render to everyone his due—was also, more specifically, the standard for the new nation’s government and civil laws.  Civil laws are just and legitimate, the Founders recognized, only when they adhere to the higher moral law.  Civil laws that disregard the moral law are thus unjust and illegitimate.  As such, the Law of Nature and God served and serves as a general legal framework and aspiration for the U. S. Constitution and the nation’s civil laws and amendments.

The idea that the Law of Nature and God should serve as a higher law to guide man’s civil law was found among various European thinkers in history who impacted the early Americans.  Enlightenment-era thinkers influential to the American Founding—including Charles de Montesquieu, William Blackstone, John Locke, and Algernon Sidney—all affirmed this principle.

In his 1748 Spirit of the Laws, French philosopher Charles-Louis Baron de Montesquieu, the most cited secular thinker of the American founding era, asserted the value for civil law of the universal moral law to love others found in the Bible.  He observes, “The Christian religion, which ordains that men should love each other, would, without doubt, have every nation blest with the best civil, the best political laws; because these, next to this religion, are the greatest good that men can give and receive.”[1]

British lawyer and jurist William Blackstone, the second most frequently cited secular thinker of the American founding era, confirmed in his 1765-1769 Commentaries on the Laws of England that the Law of Nature and God was the standard of all just civil laws.  He writes, “Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation [God’s revelation as found in the Bible or Holy Scripture], depend all human laws.  That is to say, no human laws should be suffered to contradict these.[2]

British philosopher John Locke, the third most frequently cited secular thinker of the American founding era, also asserted that the legitimacy of man-made laws comes from the Law of Nature and God.  In his 1689 Second Treatise of Civil Government, he explains,

The obligations of the law of Nature cease not in society, but only in many cases are drawn closer, and have, by human laws, known penalties annexed to them to enforce their observation.  Thus the law of Nature stands as an eternal rule to all men, legislators as well as others.  The rules that they [men] make for other men’s actions, as well as their own, must be conformable to the law of Nature—i.e. to the will of God, of which that [law] is a declaration.  The fundamental law of Nature being the preservation of mankind, no human sanction can be good or valid against it.[3]

In his 1698 essay, Discourses Concerning Government, British politician and theorist Algernon Sidney shared Locke’s view that civil governments and laws can only rightly exist if they abide by the Law of Nature and God.  He says, “If it be said that every nation ought in this to follow their own constitutions, we are at an end of our controversies.  For they ought not to be followed, unless they are rightly made.  They cannot be rightly made, if they are contrary to the universal law of God and nature.[4]

Like these God-oriented Enlightenment thinkers, the American Founders and leading early Americans—including James Wilson, James McHenry, Joseph Story, and John Quincy Adams—acknowledged the Law of Nature and God as the basis for a new nation and the standard for the United States’ civil laws.  Man-made laws, they affirmed, are not legitimized merely by an earthly civil power or by the people’s majority.  Man-made laws must abide by the higher moral law in order to be valid, just, and worthy of obedience.  If a civil state violates this moral law by, for example, legalizing or ordering the cold-blooded murder of an innocent person, such a law or order would be considered illegitimate and should not be obeyed.

I've said this again and again in my own words. Now, from those wiser and more fluent than I.

 

https://americanheritage.org/the-law-of-nature-and-natures-god-the-...