Common Law and Natural Law in America : From the Puritans to the Legal Realists

Students of law, history, ethics, or religion will learn from this fresh and ambitious four-hundred-year narrative of the varied interactions of American common law - the stuff of courtrooms - and natural law, a higher moral law. Arguing against prevailing scholarly views, its chapters re-assess major figures and debates.

Speaking to today's flourishing conversations on both law, morality, and religion, and the religious foundations of law, politics, and society, Common Law and Natural Law in America is an ambitious four-hundred-year narrative and fresh re-assessment of the varied American interactions of 'common law', the stuff of courtrooms, and 'natural law', a law built on human reason, nature, and the mind or will of God. It offers a counter-narrative to the dominant story of common law and natural law by drawing widely from theological and philosophical accounts of natural law, as well as primary and secondary work in legal and intellectual history. With consequences for today's natural-law proponents and critics alike, it explores the thought of the Puritans, Revolutionary Americans, and seminal legal figures including William Blackstone, Joseph Story, Christopher Columbus Langdell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and the legal realists.