The Best Natural Law Books 2025

1. Natural Rights and the Right to Choose, (Paperback)

Over the last thirty years the American political class has come to talk itself out of the doctrines of "natural rights" that formed the main teaching of the American Founders and Abraham Lincoln. With that move, they have talked themselves out of the ground of their own rights. But the irony is that they have made this transition without the least awareness, and indeed with a kind of serene conviction that they have been expanding constitutional rights. Since 1965, in the name of "privacy" and "autonomy," they have unfolded, vast new claims of liberty, all of them bound up in some way with the notion of sexual freedom, and yet this new scheme of rights depends on a denial, at the root, of the premises and logic of natural rights. Hadley Arkes argues that the "right to choose an abortion" has functioned as the "right" that has shifted the political class from doctrines of natural right. The new "right to choose" overturned the liberal jurisprudence of the New Deal, and placed jurisprudence on a notably different foundation. And so even if there is a "right" to abortion, that right has been detached from the logic of natural rights and stripped of moral substance. As a consequence, the people who have absorbed these new notions of rights have put themselves in a position in which they can no longer offer a moral defense of any of their rights. Hadley Arkes is the Edward Ney Professor of American Institutions at Amherst College. He is the author of First Things (Princeton, 1986), Beyond the Constitution (Princeton, 1990), and The Reform Constitution (Princeton, 1994). He has been a contributor to First Things, the journal that took its name from his book of that title.

Natural Rights and the Right to Choose, (Paperback) Author: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 9780521604789 Format: Paperback Publication Date: 2004-08-02 Page Count: 315

2. Natural Rights and the Right to Choose, (Hardcover)

Over the last thirty years the American political class has come to talk itself out of the doctrines of "natural rights" that formed the main teaching of the American Founders and Abraham Lincoln. With that move, they have talked themselves out of the ground of their own rights. But the irony is that they have made this transition without the least awareness, and indeed with a kind of serene conviction that they have been expanding constitutional rights. Since 1965, in the name of "privacy" and "autonomy," they have unfolded, vast new claims of liberty, all of them bound up in some way with the notion of sexual freedom, and yet this new scheme of rights depends on a denial, at the root, of the premises and logic of natural rights. Hadley Arkes argues that the "right to choose an abortion" has functioned as the "right" that has shifted the political class from doctrines of natural right. The new "right to choose" overturned the liberal jurisprudence of the New Deal, and placed jurisprudence on a notably different foundation. And so even if there is a "right" to abortion, that right has been detached from the logic of natural rights and stripped of moral substance. As a consequence, the people who have absorbed these new notions of rights have put themselves in a position in which they can no longer offer a moral defense of any of their rights. Hadley Arkes is the Edward Ney Professor of American Institutions at Amherst College. He is the author of First Things (Princeton, 1986), Beyond the Constitution (Princeton, 1990), and The Reform Constitution (Princeton, 1994). He has been a contributor to First Things, the journal that took its name from his book of that title.

Natural Rights and the Right to Choose, (Hardcover) Author: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 9780521812184 Format: Hardcover Publication Date: 2002-09-02 Page Count: 332

3. Law and Irresponsibility: On the Legitimation of Human Suffering, (Paperback)

Law is widely assumed to provide contemporary society with its most important means of organizing responsibility. Across a broad range of areas of social life - from the activities of states and citizens, to work, business and private relationships - it is understood that legal regulation plays a crucial role in defining and limiting responsibilities. But Law and Irresponsibility pursues the opposite view: it explores how law organizes irresponsibility. With a particular focus on large-scale harms - including extensive human rights violations, forms of colonialism, and environmental or nuclear devastation - this book analyzes the ways in which law legitimates human suffering by demonstrating how legal institutions operate as much to deflect responsibility for harms suffered as to acknowledge them. Drawing on a series of case studies, it shows not only how law facilitates the dispersal and disavowal of responsibility, but how it does so in consistent and patterned ways. Irresponsibility is organized, and its organization is traced here to the legal forms, and the social and political conditions, that sustain 'our' complicity in human suffering. This innovative and interdisciplinary book provides a radical challenge to conventional thinking about law and legal institutions. It will be of considerable interest to those working in law, political and legal theory, sociology and moral philosophy.

Law and Irresponsibility: On the Legitimation of Human Suffering, (Paperback) Author: Routledge Cavendish ISBN: 9780415442510 Format: Paperback Publication Date: 2007-11-22 Page Count: 168

4. Pre-Owned The Elements of Law Natural and Politic. Part I: Human Nature; Part II: De Corpore Politico: with Three Lives: Pt. 1 (Oxford World's Classics) Paperback

Thomas Hobbes was the first great philosopher to write in English. His account of the human condition, first developed in The Elements of Law (1640), which comprises Human Nature and De Corpore Politico, is a direct product of the intellectual and political strife of the seventeenth century. It is also a remarkably penetrating look at human nature, and a permanently relevant analysis of the fears and self-seeking that result in the war of 'eachagainst every man'. In The Elements of Law Hobbes memorably sets out both the main lines of his general philosophy, later augmented in De Corpore (1655), and the moral and political philosophy later made famous in Leviathan (1651). Copies of Human Nature and De Corpore Politico, until 1889 printed as separate works, are rare antiques or scarcely less rare scholarly texts; this is the first complete popular edition. It is here supplemented by chapters from De Corpore and Three Lives, two from Hobbes's original Latin. These have never before been published together in English. CONDITION – USED: Books sold are in GOOD or better condition. Good Condition: Minimal damage to the cover, dust jacket may not be included, minimal wear to binding, most of the pages undamaged(e.g., minimal creases or tears), highlighting / underlining acceptable on books as long as the text is readable and markings are not excessive, no missing pages. May be a former library book, with usual treatments(e.g., mylar covers, call stickers, stamps, card pockets, barcodes, or remainder marks). Extra components, such as CDs, DVDs, figurines, or access codes are not included. ISBN: 9780192836823 ISBN10: 019283682X Contributors: Hobbes, Thomas, Gaskin, J. C. A.,

Title: Human Nature & de Corpore Politico ISBN10: 019283682X EAN: 9780192836823 Genre: POLITICAL SCIENCE / History & Theory Author: Hobbes, Thomas CONDITION - GOOD - Pre-Owned - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include 'From the library of' labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included.

5. Human Rights: Fact or Fancy?, (Paperback)

In his provocative and highly readable study, Human Rights: Fact or Fancy?, Henry B. Veatch finds the basis for human rights in natural law. He builds his argument step by step, carefully laying the foundation for his central assertion that our basic rights are discoverable directly in the facts of nature. Although the bulk of contemporary concern is with the law only and not with ethics, Veatch insists that this approach is mistaken because it leaves no place for what Aristotle called \"a natural justice.\" Law must be based on ethics, he maintains, and ethics in turn must be grounded in fact and therefore must have a basis in nature.

Human Rights: Fact or Fancy?, (Paperback) Author: LSU Press ISBN: 9780807133217 Format: Paperback Publication Date: 2007-05-15 Page Count: 276

6. Pre-Owned Natural Rights Theories: Their Origin and Development (Paperback) 0521285097 9780521285094

This book shows how political argument in terms of rights and natural rights began in medieval Europe, and how the theory of natural rights was developed in the seventeenth century after a period of neglect in the Renaissance. Dr Tuck provides a new understanding of the importance of Jean Gerson in the formation of the theories, and of Hugo Grotius in their development; he also restores the Englishman John Selden's ideas to the prominence they once enjoyed, and shows how Thomas Hobbes's political theory can best be understood against this background. In general, the book enables us to understand more fully the characteristics of the natural rights theories available to the men of the Enlightenment, and thereby to appreciate the complexity and equivocal nature of modern right theories.

Title: Natural Rights Theories: Their Origin and Development Book Format: Paperback ISBN10: 0521285097 EAN: 9780521285094 Author: Tuck, Richard CONDITION - GOOD - Pre-Owned - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include 'From the library of' labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included.