William Rawle was not a Patriot during the Revolutionary War. He sided with the King and English common law. He was a Loyalist along with his step-father and mother. His step-father was charged with treason by the Patriots and thus had to flee to New York when the English abandoned Philadelphia. And thus Rawle was a strong advocate for and believer in English common law and was loyal to the King. And under which English common law of course the break from England could not be justified. The founders and framers justified their revolution using the Bible and Natural Law of which Vattel’s Law of Nations and Principles of Natural Law was widely read and used by the many of the founders and framers, including the key ones, to write the founding documents. It is only after that the revolutionaries were going to win and then won that he then saddled up to founders and framers. He was looking out for his future career as a lawyer in the new nation. His 1829 writings still clearly indicated that as to his views on the concept of citizenship in our new nation, that he was looking to English common law and not Natural Law and Nature’s Creator for his view of the meaning of the term “natural born Citizen” put into the presidential eligibility cause at the suggestion of John Jay to George Washington.
Jared Ingersoll one of the Framers from Pennsylvania was also a loyalist and his father was also a loyalist. Went to the same law school in London as Rawle.
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney a Framer from South Carolina was also taught at the law at the same law school as Rawle and Ingersoll. And he attended the lectures of William Blackstone.
The Founders and Framers were educated in the law.
The first American edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries was printed in 1771. Fourteen signers of the Declaration of Independence bought copies. John Jay and John Adams bought copies.