Decline of Natural Law: How American Lawyers Once Used Natural Law and Why They Stopped

The concept of law as a human creation, rather than something found in nature, has significantly changed in American legal thought. This shift, explored in Stuart Banner's book "The Decline of Natural Law," was caused by long-term trends such as the use of written constitutions, the separation of law and religion, the growth of legal publishing, and the position of natural law in contested legal issues.

\n Format: Hardback
\n Length: 264 pages
\n Publication date: 02 September 2021
\n Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc
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Before the late 19th century, natural law held a significant place in the American legal system. Lawyers frequently employed it in their arguments, and judges frequently relied on it in their rulings. Conversely, natural law plays virtually no role in the legal system today. When natural law was part of a lawyer's toolkit, lawyers viewed judges as the finders of law, but when natural law dropped out of the legal system, lawyers began viewing judges as the makers of law instead.

In his book, The Decline of Natural Law, renowned legal historian Stuart Banner delves into the causes and consequences of this change. To accomplish this, Banner discusses how lawyers used natural law and why the concept seemed reasonable to them. He further examines several long-term trends in legal thought that weakened the position of natural law, including the use of written constitutions, the gradual separation of the spheres of law and religion, the rapid growth of legal publishing, and the position of natural law in some of the 19th century's most contentious legal issues. Finally, he describes both the profession's rejection of natural law in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the ways in which the legal system responded to the absence of natural law.

The Decline of Natural Law is the first book to explain how natural law once functioned in the American legal system. It offers a unique perspective on how and why this significant shift in legal thought occurred, with a particular focus on the transition from the idea that law is something we find to something we make.

\n Weight: 516g\n
Dimension: 225 x 244 x 25 (mm)\n
ISBN-13: 9780197556498\n \n