Posted on 04/23/2010 2:22:47 PM PDT by rxsid
"George Washington Consulted the Legal Treatise "Law of Nations" during his First Day in Office
Friday, April 23, 2010
There was a news account recently that President George Washington 'borrowed' the legal reference book "Law of Nations or Principles of Natural Law" and never returned it to the library in New York and now owes a huge past due fine on that book. This new current events story ties into the importance of that book to George Washington and the other founders. Attached is an image and an the account what the new President was doing with the book in 1789 in New York. The new President was found consulting that book by visitors to his office on his first day in office after the inauguration of him in New York in 1789.
New York was then the capital of the USA. See attached highlighted section of the history book, This Was New York, The Nation's Capital in 1789, by Monaghan & Lowenthal, published by Books for Libraries Press of Freeport NY. I have a copy of this rare book. But it can also be viewed online at Google's book site.
The Law of Nations by Vattel is a very important legal treatise and was very important to the founding of our nation. It was first published in 1758. The Law of Nations is mentioned in our Constitution in Article I, Section 8. The "Law of Nations or Principles of Natural Law" which is its full name was the preeminent legal treatise of the last half of the 1700s and was depended on heavily by the Revolutionary Patriots in the founding of our nation. Benjamin Franklin cited that it was being heavily used during the Constitutional Conventions when he received three new copies of the newest circa 1775 edition from the editor Dumas in Europe. And John Jay the 1st Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court cited it often. This legal book was cited many times by the various U.S. Supreme Courts in the 1800s and much of it became the common law of our land via Supreme Court decisions citing the wisdom conveyed in this book."
Continued:
http://puzo1.blogspot.com/2010/04/george-washington-consulted-legal.html
HIGH FIVE!
Thanks for finding and posting this. Here’s hoping Lakin can get to discovery and uses all these sources.
Cheers!
bump
Any suggestions how to find the debates? perhaps re are notes regarding natural born citizen.
Yeah..thanks for that..when..natural born citizen was added..there was a debate..it would be interesting what was said..we should look for it..maybe it exists..
Actually, that on wasn’t the one I was looking for, I’m still looking.
http://rs6.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwed.html the debates
located use of vattel by congress...in the debates 1787
Common law, natural law, and the law of nations are different names and approaches for what might be called the Western consensus on what law is, or should be.
They are based on classical philosophy and on Judaeo-Christian morality and theology. All of them rely on the idea that there is such a thing as objective good and evil and objective justice, free from subjective opinion and selfish desires.
Our whole civilization is based on such principles, and cannot stand in the face of political leaders who think that the law is whatever they want or whatever they choose it to be.
This goes way back beyond the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—to St. Thomas Aquinas, to St. Augustine, to St. Paul the Apostle, to Aristotle and Cicero, and to many others on whose ideas our civilization was built. And finally, as the Founders suggested, it is owed to that God whose law is written in our hearts.
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EXCELLENT!
STE=Q
Benjamin Franklin to Charles-Guillaume-Frédéric Dumas, Dec 9, 1775
“I am much obliged by the kind present you have made us of your edition of VATTEL. It came to us **in good season** when the circumstances of a rising state make it necessary FREQUENTLY to CONSULT the LAW OF NATIONS. Accordingly, that copy which I KEPT, (after depositing one in our own public library here, and sending the other to the college of Massachusetts Bay, as you directed) has been CONTINUALLY in the HAND of the MEMBERS of our CONGRESS, now sitting, who are much PLEASED with your notes and preface, and have ENTERTAINED a HIGH and JUST ESTEEM for their author” {VATTEL}...
(Emphases mine)
STE=Q
I thought there was one, but wow...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2495096/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2495160/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2495440/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2495732/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2495847/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2496334/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2496597/posts
about the book:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1294965/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2148074/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2305903/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2504982/posts
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