It is you that does not understand the heritage of our founders & English history. The Reformation & the civil war in England in the mid 1600’s has everything to do with our revolution. It set the stage for what was to come.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2626433/posts?page=299#299
“Under English common law, they had NO right to do that so where did they acquire that right?”
From the same place the English Whigs claimed to get their right to topple the crown in 1688. From English history. From the special rights and privileges of being a free Englishman.
By the way, arguing over whether revolution is justified by law is the worst sort of sophism. Concepts as vague as removed from quotidian society, such as popular sovereignty, the “right to revolution,” the social contract are rarely codified in law. They are kept floating in the air for good reason. How do you practice popular sovereignty, anyway, once someone disagrees, which is immediately? You don’t. The 9th amendment of the U.S. Constitution is a notable exception, but see how often that’s invoked, and how much good it’s done.
Of course the common law didn’t say anywhere “If you ever get tired of all this, it may please you to go ahead and throw it overboard. We won’t mind.” Men had to find inspiration for drastic action elswhere. Philosophy, for instance. But if you believe philosophy springs from the ground fully formed, I have a bridge to sell you. Especially in its political form, it can hardly be untethered to prosaic origins. No philosphy is totally unaffected by the legal tradition of the country in which it was developed. None is su generis.
If it seems I make a true though trivial point, I submit British and American whigism, which in a world of prosaic tetherings is notable for its groundedness. Anyone who can’t perceive their origin in the common law tradition has their head in the sand. We can overstate these things. The Whigs themselves were too fond of projecting themselves back into the past. It’s hardly likely that the Magna Carta has a direct connection to 1688 or 1776. But—and here’s the important thing—William and Mary-ites and patriots thought it did, and said so endlessly.
If I was compiling a list of intellectual inducements to revolution, I’d put Whig politics and the English legal system right up there, maybe higher, with religion, the Enlightenment (as loosely as that term is often applied)—including Jeffersonian/Painean rights of man, Franklinian science, rationalism, etc.—and the example of the ancients (noble Greece and Rome: Plato, Cicero, Cato and the rest). It difficult to overestimate its importance.
“It is you that does not understand the heritage of our founders & English history. The Reformation & the civil war in England in the mid 1600’s has everything to do with our revolution. It set the stage for what was to come.”
Not in my opinion. I put the heritage squarely at the Glorious Revolution. Cromwell was no Washington. Except in that it was an overreaching (or seemingly overreaching) monarch, not the same conditions.
“The founders dissolved ALL political bands.”
It occurs to me that there might be some confusion going around, and I don’t know if it’s intentional obfuscation, but I’d like to clear something up. The notion that English common law impacted American law after the revolution is not to say we continued under the British jurisdiction in any manner. No, it’s only to acknowledge the huge debt owed. Its coninued consequences on the development of American common law, the inspiration to be found in it for the revolution (many aspects of which are easily distinguishable in the Declaration of Independence) and post-revolutionary constitutional law (especially the Bill of Rights), and more.
By acknowledging the debt we do not intend to say every part of the tradition is at all times present at every level of American government to this day. However, we do reserve a bias in its favor for existing in some form, for obvious reasons. Centuries of tradition do not disappear, even in the 200 years we’ve been an independent nation.
As for the “law of nations,” it’s true that they actually still exist—now known as “international law”—in an enforceable form, unlike English law. However, it only covers the relations between nations, and then mostly by treaty. It has no say over domestic issues. Or, rather, no say but what we give it.
Much like English law, in that sense. Except, of course—and I’m not telling tales out of school—we know English law has the advantage. After all, how many countries abide by the law of the seas? How many recognize international law? Almost all of them. How many of them have the unique common law/parliamentery-congressional/constitutional system shared by the British and U.S.? A lot of them, now. But not back when. They converted by our example.
We don’t have courts very often checking international law to guide their decisions. We check Blackstone. We follow the basic outlines of their tort law, property law, contract law, labor law, family law, constitutional law. You can’t find that in the laws of nations, and you can’t find it in all those Frenchified countries.