American Interpretations of Natural Law

When James Otis in 1764 declared that government “has an everlasting foundation in the unchangeable will of God, the author of nature, whose laws never vary,” and that “there can be no prescription old enough to supersede the law of nature and the grant of God Almighty, who has given to all men a natural right to be free,” he was at once making use of one of the oldest and most important conceptions in the history of political thought and giving to that concept a distinctly American meaning. His was merely one of the earliest examples in this country of a kind of political theory which was to find reflection in the Declaration of Independence in one generation, in the higher law doctrine in another, and in a famous trilogy of decisions of the Supreme Court in still a third. However, the natural-rights theory is by no means the only usage found for the natural-law concept in the political thought of this country, and it is the purpose of this paper to trace briefly the various interpretations placed upon it and the different forms through which it has passed.It is easy enough to say that natural law has meant just what the individual theorist desired to have it mean; for its content has varied from philosophical anarchy to paternalistic aristocracy, and from the assertion of strongly individualistic democracy to the defence of highly centralized government. But this statement does not dispose of the problem. It is necessary to know why and when these varying interpretations were advanced and what their exponents meant when they spoke so confidently of the laws of nature.