Congress
should
- obey "The Laws of Nature and
of Nature's God"
Our nation's Declaration
of Independence, the charter that created the United States of
America, contains these words:
| When
in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for
one people to dissolve the political bands which have
connected them with another, and to assume among the
Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to
which the Laws of Nature and of
Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to
the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare
the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal, that they are endowed
by their Creator with
certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,
Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
We, therefore, the Representatives of
the united States of America, in General Congress,
Assembled, appealing to the
Supreme Judge of the world
for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the
Name, and by Authority of the good People of these
Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United
Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and
Independent States; that they are Absolved from all
Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political
connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is
and ought to be totally dissolved. . . . And for the
support of this Declaration, with
a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence,
we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes
and our sacred Honor.
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The Declaration of Independence was a
history-changing declaration that powerful, intrusive government
was contrary to "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's
God," and that the People had a God-given right to a more
libertarian system of government.
Our Founding Fathers fought against tax rates which scholars
estimate were about 3-5%. Today's taxes are ten times higher,
and our Founding Fathers would feel betrayed that we have lost
what they fought for.
But more important than taxes is character. America's
Founding Fathers believed that religion and morality were more
important than low taxes. In fact, they believed that high
taxes and tyrannical government was a symptom
of the absence of religion and morality. One of America's most
important founding charters had this requirement for the
Northwest Territory:
| "Religion,
morality, and knowledge, being necessary
to good government and the happiness of
mankind . . . shall forever be encouraged." |
Congress subsequently applied this requirement to the Southern
Territory and the Missouri Territory when parts of those
territories joined the Union as states.
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The Court requires
government at all levels to maintain a neutrality between
theism and non-theism which results, in practical effect, in
a governmental preference of the religion of agnostic
secularism. Justice Brennan argued, in his concurrence in
the 1963 school prayer case, that the words "under
God" could still be kept in the Pledge of Allegiance
only because they "no longer have a religious purpose
or meaning." Instead, according to Brennan they
"may merely recognize the historical fact that our
Nation was believed to have been founded 'under God." [Abington
School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 304, (1963).]
This false neutrality would logically prevent an assertion
by any government official, whether President or school
teacher, that the
Declaration of Independence—the first of the Organic
Laws of the United States printed at the head of the
United States Code—is in fact true when it asserts that
men are endowed "by their Creator" with certain
unalienable rights and when it affirms "the Laws of
Nature and of Nature's God," a "Supreme Judge of
the world" and "Divine
Providence."
[return to text]
|
|
"The Constitution:
Guarantor of Religion," in
Derailing the Constitution: The Undermining of American
Federalism,
edited by Edward B. McLean, Intercollegiate Studies
Institute, 1997, pp. 155-56.
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Today, however, the
federal judiciary has declared that religion and morality must
not be encouraged by any state in the union.
Notre Dame Professor of Law Charles E. Rice has observed
(see box) that under current Court interpretation, if a student asks
a teacher if the Declaration of
Independence was really true when it spoke about God,
"Providence," and "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's
God," The teacher could not say "Yes, our
nation is based on these eternal truths." Presumably, no
competent public school teacher (?) would say, "No, America is
just one big lie." So this means that a school teacher can only
say "I don't know" when asked if the Declaration of
Independence is true.
Not a single person who signed the
Constitution intended to prohibit a school teacher from telling
students that the Declaration of Independence was really true when
it spoke about God, "Providence," and "the Laws of
Nature and of Nature's God."
The Court's decisions represent just the
tip of the iceberg. Below the surface are tens of millions of
Americans who have never read the Declaration of Independence and do
not know what principles America was built upon.
The Source of Law and Order
What did America's Founding Fathers mean when they spoke of
"the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God?"
John Locke (1632-1704) was a Christian philosopher who had a
great influence in America. He said:
[T]he Law of Nature stands as an eternal rule to all men,
legislators as well as others. The rules that they make for other
men's actions must . . . be conformable to the Law of Nature,
i.e., to the will of God.
[L]aws human must be made according to the general laws of Nature,
and without contradiction to any positive law of Scripture,
otherwise they are ill made.
Locke, Two Treatises
on Government, Bk II sec 135. (quoting Hooker's Ecclesiastical
Polity, 1.iii, § 9 )
William Blackstone (1723-1780)
was cited more frequently than Locke by America's Founding Fathers.
In 1810 Thomas Jefferson wryly commented that American lawyers used
Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England with the
same dedication and reverence that Muslims used the Koran.
Blackstone described the Laws
of Nature and of Nature's God in a chapter in his Commentaries entitled,
"Of the Nature of Laws in General." An excerpt is
found here. Among the highlights:
Man, considered as a creature,
must necessarily be subject to the laws of his Creator, for he is
entirely a dependent being. And consequently, as man depends
absolutely upon his Maker for everything, it is necessary that he
should, in all points, conform to his Maker's will.
This will of his Maker is called the law of nature.
This law of nature, being coeval [existing
at the same time - ed.] with mankind, and dictated by God
himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is
binding over all the globe in all countries, and at all times: no
human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of
them as are valid derive all their force and all their authority,
mediately or immediately, from this original. The doctrines thus
delivered we call the revealed or divine law, and they are to be
found only in the holy scriptures. These precepts, when revealed,
are found upon comparison to be really a part of the original law
of nature, as they tend in all their consequences to man's
felicity [happiness].
Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the
law of revelation, depend all human laws; that is to say, no human
laws should be suffered to contradict these.
The Chief
Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court recently
had an occasion to describe the influence of Blackstone and
further explain the meaning of the phrase "the Laws of Nature
and of Nature's God":
American law derives its
principles from the common law of England, clearly explained
in Commentaries on the Laws of England by Sir William
Blackstone. In 1799, Associate Justice of the United States
Supreme Court, James Iredell, charged the grand jury of the
Circuit Court for the District of Pennsylvania as follows:
"[F]or near 30 years [The Commentaries on
the Laws of England] has been the manual of almost
every student of law in the United States, and its
uncommon excellence has also introduced it into the
libraries, and often to the favourite reading of private
gentlemen; so that [Sir William Blackstone's] views of the
subject could scarcely be unknown to those who framed the
Amendment to the Constitution, ...."
Claypoole's American Daily Advertiser,
April 11, 1799, Philadelphia, 3 The Documentary History
of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1789-1800,
at 347 (Maeva Marcus, ed., Columbia University Press 1990)
(emphasis added).
Because Blackstone's Commentaries was the manual
for law students in the United States during and after the
revolutionary period and the drafting of the United States
Constitution, we should consider his interpretations of
common law not only as influential but also as authoritative
for applying the common law today.
Blackstone's explanation of the common law is important
because of the influence it has had upon the American legal
system. In 1993, Justice Antonin Scalia stated:
"The conception of the judicial role that [Chief
Justice John Marshall] possessed, and that was shared by
succeeding generations of American judges until very
recent times, took it to be 'the province and duty of the
judicial department to say what the law is,' Marbury
v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 177 (1803) (emphasis added)
-- not what the law shall be. That original
and enduring American perception of the judicial role
sprang not from the philosophy of Nietzsche but from the
jurisprudence of Blackstone, which viewed retroactivity as
an inherent characteristic of the judicial power, a power
'not delegated to pronounce a new law, but to maintain and
expound the old one.' 1 W. Blackstone, Commentaries
69 (1765)."
Harper v. Virginia Dep't of Taxation,
509 U.S. 86, 107 (1993) (Scalia, J., concurring).
Natural law forms the basis of the
common law. (7) Natural law
is the law of nature and of nature's God as understood by
men through reason, but aided by direct revelation found in
the Holy Scriptures:
"The doctrines thus delivered we
call the revealed or divine law, and they are to be found
only in the Holy Scriptures. These precepts, when
revealed, are found upon comparison to be really a part of
the original law of nature, as they tend in all their
consequences to man's felicity."
(8)
1 William Blackstone, Commentaries
42.
Blackstone's Commentaries explain that because our
reason is full of error, the most certain way to ascertain
the law of nature is through direct revelation. The ultimate
importance of this law and its influence upon our law cannot
be understated.
"Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and
the law of revelation, depend all human laws; that is to
say, no human laws should be suffered to contradict these.
There is, it is true, a great number of indifferent
points, in which both the divine law and the natural leave
a man at his own liberty; but which are found necessary
for the benefit of society to be restrained within certain
limits. And herein it is that human laws have their
greatest force and efficacy; for, with regard to such
points as are not indifferent, human laws are only
declaratory of, and act in subordination to, the
former."
1 Blackstone, Commentaries 42.
There are impeccable American sources for the above
proposition. James Wilson, Associate Justice on the first
United States Supreme Court and signer of both the
Declaration of Independence and the United States
Constitution, said:
"Human law must rest its authority ultimately upon
the authority of that law which is divine .... Far from
being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin
sisters, friends, and mutual assistants. Indeed, these two
sciences run into each other."
James Wilson, "Of the General
Principles of Law and Obligation," in 1 The Works
of the Honourable James Wilson, 104-06 (Bird Wilson
ed., Bronson and Chauncey 1804).
John Jay, first Chief Justice of the United States
Supreme Court and coauthor of the Federalist Papers,
declared:
"[N]o sovereign ought to permit those who are
under his Command to violate the precepts of the Law of
Nature, which forbids all Injuries ...."
"John Jay's Charge to the Grand Jury
of the Circuit Court for the District of Virginia, May 22,
1793, Richmond, Virginia." 2 The Documentary
History of the Supreme Court of the United States,
1789-1800, at 386 (Maeva Marcus, ed., Columbia
University Press 1988).
Our own Declaration of Independence refers to "the
laws of nature and of nature's God":
"When, in the course of human events, it becomes
necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds
which have connected them with another, and to assume
among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal
station to which the laws of nature and of nature's
God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions
of mankind requires that they should declare the causes
which impel them to the separation." (Emphasis
added.)
It would be an odd logic to assert that the American
colonies could use the law of God "to dissolve the
political bonds which have connected them with another, and
to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and
equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's
God entitle them," but not to decide the fundamental
basis of their laws.
| 7. There can be
no debate as to the connection between the common
law and the natural law. . . . Chief Justice
Sir Christopher Wray and the entire Court at King's
Bench resolved a point of law as follows: |
- "That in this point, as
almost in all others, the common law was
grounded on the law of God ...."
- Ratcliff's Case, 76 Eng.
Rep. 713, 726 (K.B. 1592). [back]
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| 8. Blackstone
indicated that one law was more reliable than the
other: |
- "If we could be as certain
of the [natural law] as we are of the [revealed
law], both would have an equal authority; but,
till then, they can never be put in any
competition together."
- 1 William Blackstone, Commentaries
42. [back]
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When a nation departs from "the Laws of Nature and of
Nature's God," crime obviously goes up, but so does government
intrusion, taxation, and violation of God-given rights.
We must return to the Founding Principles of America.
next: Campaign Finance, Corruption and the
Oath of Office
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