American Enterprise Institute

Natural Rights, the Common Good, and the American Revolution

Natural Rights, Culture, and the Common Good Notes

  1. US Department of State, “Notice of Intent to Establish an Advisory Committee,” Federal Register 84, no. 104 (May 30, 2019): 25109, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/05/30/2019-11300/department-of-state-commission-on-unalienable-rights.
  2. Alexis Papazoglou, “The Sneaky Politics of ‘Natural Law,’” The New Republic, June 13, 2009, https://newrepublic.com/article/154192/sneaky-politics-natural-law; and Trudy Ring, “Is State Department’s ‘Natural Law’ Effort Code for Homophobia?,” Advocate, June 1, 2019, https://www.advocate.com/politics/2019/6/01/state-departments-natural-law-effort-code-homophobia.
  3. Papazoglou, “The Sneaky Politics of ‘Natural Law.’”
  4. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Harvard University Press, 1971), 31, 396.
  5. This section and the following one draw from Robert P. George, Constitutional Structures and Civic Virtues, Baltimore Bar Library, http://www.barlib.org/Constitutional%20Structures%20and%20Civic%20Virtues.pdf.
  6. On the rational (and moral) basis of political authority, see generally John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2011), 231–59.
  7. See John Finnis, “Law as Co-Ordination,” Ratio Juris 2, no. 1 (1989): 97–104, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9337.1989.tb00029.x.
  8. Edmund Burke, “Reflections on the Revolution in France,” in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, vol. 3 (1887; Project Gutenberg, 2005), https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15679/15679-h/15679-h.htm#REFLECTIONS.
  9. Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights, 155.
  10. Isaiah Berlin, The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas (Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), 208.
  11. John Finnis, “Is Natural Law Theory Compatible with Limited Government?,” in Robert P. George, ed., Natural Law, Liberalism, and Morality: Contemporary Essays (Clarendon Press, 1996), 1–26 (esp. at 5–9).
  12. Robert P. George, “The Concept of Public Morality,” The American Journal of Jurisprudence 45, no. 1 (2000): 17–31, https://academic.oup.com/ajj/article-abstract/45/1/17/218013.
  13. See Peter L. Berger and Richard John Neuhaus, To Empower People: The Role of Mediating Structures in Public Policy (American Enterprise Institute, 1977), https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/AEI-STUDIES-POLITICAL-139-1.pdf.
  14. Jeremy Waldron, “Parliamentary Recklessness: Why We Need to Legislate More Carefully,” lecture, Heritage Hotel, Auckland, New Zealand, July 28, 2008, 32–33, https://maxim.org.nz/content/uploads/2021/03/SJGL-2008-Monograph-Jeremy-Waldron.pdf.
  15. James Madison, “Second Annual Message to Congress,” speech, December 5, 1810, https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/december-5-1810-second-annual-message.
  16. Federalist, no. 51 (James Madison or Alexander Hamilton), https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-04-02-0199.
  17. John Adams to the Officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts, October 11, 1798, Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-3102.