“Rights are built on a fourfold foundation—on Nature, on the British constitution, on charters, and on immemorial usage,” but he pushed for an American understanding that rights were primarily rooted in “the broadest Bottom, the Ground of Nature.”17 This is why the Declaration of Independence sources rights to the “laws of Nature and Nature’s God.” Human reason, so the theory goes, can examine the character and activities of mankind and determine what mankind was meant to do—and what liberties mankind was handed in order to pursue those purposes. Thus, the natural law logic that prizes reason
...more
