The notion that “international law” arises chiefly from treaties among nations, even the term “international” itself, is a development subsequent to the Declaration indeed, one commentator has traced the origin of modern thinking about international law to the question among European powers of what constituted formal recognition of American independence. But the powers belonging “of right” to “free and independent states” detailed in the Declaration’s conclusion – “to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce” and unspecified others – should probably be understood as natural in the minds of the Declaration’s signers. Little is said at the beginning of the Declaration about this aspect of natural law, other than that it supports the equality of separate states. Instead, they addressed the “opinions of mankind” and made their appeal on the basis of “the laws of nature and of nature’s God.” Seen as justification for recognition of the political independence of the new United States, natural law appears to ground the law of nations in the absence of an imperial suzerain or an international league, nature itself must be the standard and world opinion its court. The middle section of the Declaration of Independence follows this pattern, detailing complaints against the king and Parliament alleging constitutional violations, unconstitutional statutes, and acts of oppression and war.īecause the Congress in July 1776 had resolved upon independence from Great Britain, however, they thought it inadequate to appeal only to the British constitution. Declarations and petitions of this sort were themselves part of the English constitutional tradition, from Magna Carta in 1215 through the 1689 Bill of Rights. These documents catalogued grievances against British colonial policy, appealing for the most part to liberties and privileges claimed under the English constitution and the common law. To understand why this is so and what it means for American constitutionalism requires reading the text of the Declaration in its political, historical, and philosophical context.Īs a political statement, the Declaration was the culmination of a series issued by the several Continental Congresses, the voluntary associations of representatives of thirteen British colonies in North America that spoke for the colonists as a whole. No public document gives more prominence to the idea of natural law, nor relies more crucially upon natural law as a premise, than the Declaration of Independence. Click here to read PD Editor-in-Chief R.J. This essay is part of a week-long series drawn from the Witherspoon Institute’s project on Natural Law, Natural Rights, and American Constitutionalism.
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