• ernestm
    1k
    American law and natural law has never been used as an impediment for any American policy decisionHanover

    Generally, no. America does not even teach the natural law which led to its foundation any more because it requires a belief in God in order to be rational. You have to go to Europe to learn that.

    There's a couple of exceptions which led to civil war and women getting the vote where natural law led to constitutional amendments.

    Beyond that, no, Americans are not keen on natural law because it so sometimes contradicts decisions about constitutional law made in the last century, and according to concepts of legal positivism, that is legally heretical. Attorneys are not permitted to consider that American law is sometimes wrong. So that's a second reason they don't teach it.

    From another country's perspective, however, the USA is required to uphold the natural law it used as justification to revolt against the British, or it loses the authority to rule.
  • Hanover
    12k
    Attorneys are not permitted to consider that American law is sometimes wrong. So that's a second reason they don't teach it.ernestm

    I can consider that a law is immoral (I am an attorney), and I was taught what natural law is. It's not a secret. It's just a vague notion of what rights attach to people for being people.

    From another country's perspective, however, the USA is required to uphold the natural law it used as justification to revolt against the British, or it loses the authority to rule.ernestm

    I think it'd be hypocritical for the US to object to another oppressed people's decision to revolt against their oppressive government if their bases were the same as itemized in the Declaration, but that's as far as it would go. I don't know there's a duty not to be hypocritical tough, nor does hypocrisy affect a nation's ability to rule.
  • ernestm
    1k
    Hey Im not evangelical, lol. Believe what you want.
  • Agent Smith
    9.5k
    For people: Privacy [We'll wear burqas]
    For governments: Transparency [Governments shall be stark-naked]

    [...]that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. — Abraham Lincoln

    :brow: :chin:
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