Natural Law - Pilgrims Beacon

Natural law is a philosophy of law that focuses on the laws of nature. This school of jurisprudence represents the belief that there are inherent laws that are common to all societies, whether or not they are written down or officially enacted. This school of thought tells us that law is rational and reasonable. Natural law proposes that laws are a logical progression from morals. Therefore, actions that are considered to be morally wrong will be against the law. But also, actions that are considered to be morally right can’t truly and justly be against the law. Natural law exists regardless of what laws are enacted. Our Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights are both heavily based on natural law. Thomas Jefferson even cited natural law in the Declaration of Independence, calling it ‘the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God’ or [biblical law].

Via: study.com Business 103: Introductory Business Law

LSE Research: The Moral Structure of Legal Systems, pt. 2

Part II of The Moral Structure of Legal Systems (Part I on Legal Positivism) concerns a peculiar correlation: tyrannical regimes nearly always possess chaotic legal systems. Dr. Kristen Rundle asks: Why?

One of the characteristic features of tyrannical regimes is their chaotic legal system. For Dr. Rundle, this isn’t just a case of poor legal housekeeping. The systemic disorder typically exhibited by the legal systems of despotic and transitional states occurs precisely because tyrants require forms of power that are incompatible with law.

Chaos works in the tyrant’s favor. Impose a legal code that is transparent, consistent, and which does not permit retroactivity — impose, in other words, a legal system recognizably distinct from arbitrary commands — and the tyrant finds his urge to wield absolute power has been tied up.

Hence the so-called “rule-of-law” is the idea that we owe our obedience to the law, not the lawgiver. Such a system doesn’t prescribe perfect justice, of course. But it does, crucially, impose constraints on the ambitions of the would-be tyrannical dictator.

Video Credit: London School of Economics and Political Science

The Juror: The people’s last safeguard against unjust law and tyranny

JURY POWER in the system of checks and balances:

In a Constitutional system of justice, such as ours, there is a judicial body with more power than Congress, the President, or even the Supreme Court. Yes, the trial jury protected under our Constitution has more power than all these government officials. This is because it has the final veto power over all “acts of the legislature” that may come to be called “laws”.

In fact, the power of jury nullification predates our Constitution. In November of 1734, a printer named John Peter Zenger was arrested for seditious libel against his Majesty’s government. At that time, a law of the Colony of New York forbids any publication without prior government approval. Freedom of the press was not enjoyed by the early colonialists! Zenger, however, defied this censorship and published articles strongly critical of New York colonial rule.

When brought to trial in August of 1735, Zenger admitted publishing the offending articles but argued

that the truth of the facts stated justified their publication. The judge instructed the jury that the truth is not a justification for libel. Rather, truth makes the libel more vicious, for public unrest is more likely to follow true, rather than false claims of bad governance. And since the defendant had admitted to the “fact” of publication, only a question of “law” remained.

Then, as now, the judge said the “issue of law” was for the court to determine, and he instructed the jury to find the defendant guilty. It took only ten minutes for the jury to disregard the judge’s instructions on the law and find Zenger NOT GUILTY.

That is the power of the jury at work; the power to decide the issues of law under which the defendant is charged, as well as the facts. In our system of checks and balances, the jury is our final check, the people’s last safeguard against unjust law and tyranny. Get your free jury information kit at fija.org.

Power of the Grand Jury

Via: John Liberty YouTube Channel

National Center For Constitutional Studies

The Founders DID NOT establish the Constitution for the purpose of granting rights. Rather, they established this government of laws (not a government of men) in order to secure each person’s Creator endowed rights to life, liberty, and property. Only in America, did a nation’s founders recognize that rights, though endowed by the Creator as unalienable prerogatives, would not be sustained in society unless they were protected under a code of law which was itself in harmony with a higher law. They called it “natural law,” or “Nature’s law.” Such law is the ultimate source and established a limit for all of man’s laws and is intended to protect each of these natural rights for all of mankind. The Declaration of Independence of 1776 established the premise that in America a people might assume the station “to which the laws of Nature and Nature’s God entitle them..”

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Two Treatises of Government

Or Two Treatises of Government: In the Former, The False Principles, and Foundation of Sir Robert Filmer, and His Followers, Are Detected and Overthrown. The Latter Is an Essay Concerning The True Original, Extent, and End of Civil Government) is a work of political philosophy published anonymously in 1689 by John Locke. The First Treatise attacks patriarchalism in the form of a sentence-by-sentence refutation of Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha, while the Second Treatise outlines Locke’s ideas for a more civilized society based on natural rights and contract theory. – wikipedia.org

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The Law by Frederic Bastiat

How is it that the law enforcer itself does not have to keep the law? How is it that the law permits the state to lawfully engage in actions which, if undertaken by individuals,

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would land them in jail? These are among the most intriguing issues in political and economic philosophy. More specifically, the problem of law that itself violates the law is an

insurmountable conundrum of all statist philosophies. The problem has never been discussed so profoundly and passionately as in this essay by Frederic Bastiat from 1850. The essay might have been written today. It applies in every way to our own time, which is precisely why so many people credit this one essay for showing them the light of liberty. Bastiat’s essay here is timeless because applies whenever and wherever the state assumes unto itself different rules and different laws from that by which it expects other people to live. And so we have this legendary essay, written in a white heat against the leaders of 19th century France, the reading of which has shocked millions out of their toleration of despotism. This new edition from the Mises Institute revives a glorious translation that has been out of print for a hundred years, one that circulated in Britain in the generation that followed Bastiat’s death. This newly available translation provides new insight into Bastiat’s argument. It is a more sophisticated, more substantial, and more precise rendering than any in print. The question that Bastiat deals with: how to tell when a law is unjust or when the lawmaker has become a source of lawbreaking? When the law becomes a means of plunder it has lost its character of genuine law. When the law enforcer is permitted to do with others’ lives and property what would be illegal if the citizens did them, the law becomes perverted.

Provided by the Mises Institute, you can read the full text HERE.

Globalist Tactics: LEGAL POSITIVISM

LEGAL RESOURCES FOR PILGRIMS, PATRIOTS, PASTORS AND MORE