Doctrine Of Natural Rights Research Articles

Konsepsi Pendidikan Sebagai Hak Konstitusional

This research generally aims to identify the developments in the concept of human rights at both the national and international levels. In particular, this study analyzes how the conception of education is a constitutional right of every Indonesian citizen. This study employs normative legal research methods supported by several approaches, namely conceptual, statutory and historical approaches. The results of this study conclude that the development of human rights which originally came from the doctrine of natural rights has developed into constitutional rights when these rights were included as part of the constitutions of many countries. This study found that education is a constitutional right based on Article 31 of the 1945 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia relating to the right to education, there are a number of basic principles that must be considered, including: first, Education, as a constitutional right which is part of positive rights, requires the state to make public policies that each moment brings closer to the fulfillment or maximum enjoyment of this right. Second, education must be managed and organized by the state as a system, namely the national education system. Third, the government is obliged to promote science for the advancement of human welfare and civilization. As part of a constitutional right, which means part of the constitution which is a fundamental law, this right must not be deviated from the practice of administering the state.

FEMİNİST KURAM’DA KADININ POLİTİK EKONOMİSİ VE DÖNÜŞÜMÜ

Feminist kuramın başat öznesi olarak kadının toplumsal hayattaki her türden sorununu gündeme getirmesi modern dönem ideolojik yaklaşımlarıyla tarihsel-düşünsel bir süreklilik içinde gelişmiştir. Siyasal, sosyal ve iktisadi alanda cinsler arası eşitliği savunan feminist kuram esas öznesi olan kadının bu eşitlenme çabasını konu edinen bir içerik oluşturmayı çabalar. Bu çalışmada feminist kuram içinde yer alan çeşitli feminist akımlar şeklinde bir sınıflandırma uygun görülmüştür. Bu sınıflandırmanın öne çıkan belirgin izlekleri dörde indirgenmiş olup bunlar; liberal feministler, marksist feministler, radikal feministler ve ikili sistem kuramcılarıdır. Doğal haklar doktrini üzerinden kadın öznesini sorunsallaştıran liberal feminist kuramcılar toplumsal cinsiyet eşitsizliğini kapitalizm içi tartışma konusu yapmaktadırlar. Liberal feministler çözümü yine kapitalist sistem içi çözümlerde aramışlardır. Buna karşılık Marksist feministler ise tarihsel materyalist bakış açısıyla yabancılaşma, iş bölümü, sınıf temelli sömürü biçimleri üzerinden feminist kurama katkıda bulunmuşlardır. Yeni toplumsal hareketler bağlamında ortaya çıkan radikal feministler ve ikili sitem kuramcılarının esin kaynakları Marksist kuram olmak ile birlikte onu aşan bir çerçeve ile feminist kuram içinde belirgin bir iz bırakmışlardır. Partiyarkal sistemi tartışmanın merkezine koyan radikal feministler her türden eşitsizliğin bundan kaynaklandığını ve çözümün partiyarkal sistemin ortadan kaldırılması olarak görmüşlerdir. Buna karşın hem kapitalist sistem hem de patriyarkal sisteminin toplumsal cinsiyet eşitsizliğine yol açtığını öneren ikili sistem kuramcıları ise çözüm önerisini bu iki sistemin değiştirilmesi üzerine kurgulamışlardır. Bu çalışmanın esas konusu farklı feminist kuramların toplumsal cinsiyet eşitsizliğinin politik ekonomideki görünümlerine nasıl bir perspektif ile baktıklarını açığa çıkarmaktır. Bu bağlamda kuramcıların metinlerinin analizi üzerinden ve esas olarak ikili sistem kuramcılarının önerisinden hareketle bir çerçeve oluşturulmaya çalışılmıştır.

Thomas Paine: Britain, America, & France in the Age of Enlightenment and Revolution by J. C. D. Clark

Reviewed by: Thomas Paine: Britain, America, & France in the Age of Enlightenment and Revolution by J. C. D. Clark Thomas W. Merrill (bio) Keywords Thomas Paine, American Revolution, Enlightenment, Age of Revolutions, political thought Thomas Paine: Britain, America, & France in the Age of Enlightenment and Revolution. By J. C. D. Clark. (New York: Oxford University Press. 2018. Pp. 485. Cloth, $40.95.) This book reinterprets Thomas Paine and his significance through the close study of Paine's contexts in the familiar fashion of the Cambridge school of the history of political thought. Clark argues against schools of thought that see Paine as an agent in an unambiguous narrative of the development of liberal democratic modernity. He identifies three such schools of thought: one that sees Paine as a progenitor of working-class politics in England (E. P. Thompson); a second that sees him as an advocate for a worldwide tide of democratic revolution (R. R. Palmer); and a third that sees him as an exemplar of "Enlightenment" discourses of human rights (Robert Lamb). Clark has a fourth set of interlocutors, who are focused less on the interpretation of modernity than on the meaning and scope of political theory itself: those scholars (here unidentified) who think that political theory is best understood as a set of "perennial problems." To this list one may add one more interlocutor: Paine himself. The man who asserted that "the cause of America is the [End Page 144] cause of all mankind" and that "we have it in our power to begin the world over again" invited his readers to see him as an agent of a grand narrative, articulating a universal, presumably perennial truth. The drama of this book, then, is the confrontation between the Cambridge school approach, with its skepticism of universal claims and its focus on particularistic contexts, and a thinker whose claim of universalistic, revolutionary significance was a defining feature of his self-presentation. Clark's thesis is as follows. Readers after Paine's time have tended to see him as the proponent of a universal democratic revolution premised on natural rights and continuous with causes we now associate with the left: universal suffrage, workers' rights, the welfare state, secularism, etc. But despite appearances to the contrary, this is not accurate. Paine did not anticipate movements asserting the rights of enslaved persons in America, the rights of women, or even universal manhood suffrage. Nor was Paine an atheist or a secularist in the way that some French revolutionaries or English Utilitarians became. Paine's frame of reference was in the past, in English discontent with the Hanoverian monarchy, not forward-looking toward ideological developments of the nineteenth century. Paine was moved more by a desire to negate monarchy and aristocracy (the hereditary principle) than he was by any well-deliberated positive picture of the world to come. Even Paine's advocacy of state assistance to the poor, often interpreted as anticipating the welfare state, has more to do with the English poor law, Clark thinks, than it does with a progressive concern for social justice. Clark does not deny that these social movements had roots in Paine's time, but he denies that Paine had much to do with them. One of the contributions of this book is an appendix in which Clark "de-attributes" to Paine texts that he thinks have been wrongly attributed to him (most notably a long passage in the Rights of Man, Part First that Clark thinks Paine got from Lafayette). Yet the purpose of the work can be said to be de-attribution in a broader sense as well: Clark aims to cut away misleading opinions we have formed about Paine by reading him in the light of our own preoccupations, leaving behind a somewhat homely figure whose universalist claims mask particular and now largely forgotten concerns. Clark thinks that Paine actually did not know much about America or France and that Paine's revolutionary writings have more to do with England than they do their ostensible subjects. He also thinks that it is incorrect to see the American and French Revolutions as motivated by a common belief in a doctrine of natural rights. The advocacy...

Libertarny radykalizm

In the paper I identify foundations of radical libertarianism, which could be called libertarianism in a sensu stricto. This sense is perceived from the Rothbardian’s perspective, whose theory of property is pivotal for our considerations. Murray N. Rothbard claims that property rights, which are derived from the principle of self-possession, are absolute. The absoluteness of property rights is the core of our standpoint. We argue that to define libertarianism in a strict sense we need also, as supportive elements: (i) the doctrine of natural rights, on the ethical level; (ii) the Austrian theory of economy, on the level of economics; and (iii) individualistic anarchism, on a political level. We believe that the absolute right to property and these three theories can be considered as a coherent theory which we can call libertarianism in a strict sense.

Foreign Legal Doctrine in the IT Era

This Article is devoted to the theory of “digital libertarianism”; it compares this theory with the classicalAmerican Libertarianism, as well as considers the viewpoints of its proponents and opponents onthe issues of state, law and human rights on the Internet. Unlike the modern American Libertarianism,which is largely based upon the doctrine of natural rights, the “digital libertarianism” pays more attentionto the real social phenomena, and it is closer to the sociological positivism. One of the central ideas ofthe “digital libertarianism” is the sovereignty of cyberspace, which is opposed to the state sovereignty. The state paternalists as the most vigorous critics of cyberlibertarians reject this point of view andbelieve that only state can secure the respect for behavioral rights on the Internet. The technologicaland legal aspects of cyberspace, which are stressed by cyberlibertarians, allow for users to bypass thespecified requirements, and to set their own codes of behavior. In order to enforce the law, both statewith its legal traditions and network communities in addition to the legal means of influence on users’behavior use mechanisms of material coercions. These mechanisms include a combination of specifictechnologies and legal requirements for their enforcement, which lead to the real (physical) limitationof freedom for expression and information, as well as to the limitation of privacy rights, and thus ensurethe possibility for the state or self-regulating communities to secure the public and private interests.

The question of inheritance in mid-nineteenth century French liberal thought

In this paper, we explore a French debate in the nineteenth century Liberal School: the question of inheritance. We first present the opposition among liberal economists between the advocates of the liberty of bequest and the defenders of its limitations. We then try to show that these contrasted positions cannot be reduced to the confrontation between the doctrine of natural rights and the principle of social utility. Finally, we propose another explanation for the divergences of the Liberal School through different conceptions of the State.

PROGRESSIVISM AND THE DOCTRINE OF NATURAL RIGHTS

AbstractThis essay treats the Progressives' critique of the Founders' doctrine of natural rights. Natural rights had been attacked before the Progressive era—by proponents of the racial science of ethnology, advocates of philosophy of history, and followers of Charles Darwin—but the Progressives launched the most thoroughgoing and systematic critique in American history. The leading thinker conducting the critique was America's foremost philosopher John Dewey. His critique had five major points: (1) that America had entered an entirely new age of social and economic organization requiring a different political theory; (2) that all theoretical claims of truth, like natural rights, are relative to the age in which they were born and thrived; (3) that theoretical ideas serve the aims of different classes, with natural rights representing the economic and political interests of the emerging bourgeoisie; (4) that natural rights encouraged a diminished goal for human beings, emphasizing the fulfillment of individual self-interest rather a higher idea of human development and of social cooperation; and (5) that any metaphysical claim in politics is undemocratic by virtue of ascribing a standard of right that is prior to and higher than a decision of a democratic majority. The paper concludes by briefly sketching the influence that this critique had on the heirs of the Progressives, the modern liberals.

LYSANDER SPOONER: NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICA'S LAST NATURAL RIGHTS THEORIST

AbstractThe main purpose of this essay is to articulate the ideas of the last powerful advocate of natural rights in nineteenth-century America. That last powerful advocate was the Massachusetts-born radical libertarian Lysander Spooner (1808-1887). Besides his powerful antebellum attacks on slavery, Spooner developed forceful arguments on behalf of a strongly individualistic conception of natural law and private property rights and against coercive moralism, coercive paternalism, and state authority and legislation. This essay focuses on the theoretical core of Spooner’s position which is his doctrine of natural rights—a doctrine that is primarily developed in Spooner’s The Law of Intellectual Property (1855), Natural Law (1882), and A Letter to Grover Cleveland (1886). I situate Spooner within the libertarian tradition in political thought by beginning this essay with an examination of two English writers whose radical writings (for the most part) preceded Spooner’s—Thomas Hodgskin (1787-1869) and the early Herbert Spencer (1820-1903). I emphasis the strongly Lockean character of Spooner’s thought and support this contention in part by showing how much more Lockean Spooner was than either Hodgskin or the early Spencer.

Alexis de Tocqueville and the Two-Founding Thesis

AbstractAlexis de Tocqueville's account of the formation of the American regime identifies two constitutive moments: the Puritan colonization and the Revolution and the Constitution (1775–1789). Contrary to historians of the day, Tocqueville gave as much credit to the Puritans as to the Founders. Yet far from being a pure history, Tocqueville's narrative also had the purpose of promoting a new political foundation that replaced the philosophical doctrine of natural rights with an account based on “Customary History.” Tocqueville's approach was intended to further a great theoretical project inaugurated by Montesquieu that offered an alternative model to the mainstream Enlightenment position for how political philosophy should enter into and influence political life. This article analyzes the two-founding thesis, explores the underlying theoretical project on foundations of Tocqueville and Montesquieu, and presents and assesses the debate on the merits of attempting to change the political foundation of the American regime.

CLASSICAL NATURAL LAW THEORY, PROPERTY RIGHTS, AND TAXATION

AbstractClassical natural law theory derives moral conclusions from the essentialist and teleological understanding of nature enshrined in classical metaphysics. The paper argues that this understanding of nature is as defensible today as it was in the days of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas. It then shows how a natural law theory of the grounds and content of our moral obligations follows from this understanding of nature, and how a doctrine of natural rights follows in turn from the theory of natural law. With this background in place, the implications of the theory for questions about property rights and taxation are explored. It is argued that classical natural law theory entails the existence of a natural right of private property, and that this right is neither so strong as to supportlaissez fairelibertarianism, nor so weak as to allow for socialism. Though the theory leaves much of the middle ground between these extremes open to empirical rather than moral evaluation, it is argued that there is a strong natural law presumption against social democratic policies and in favor of free enterprise.

Frederick Douglass: race and the rebirth of American liberalism

For Frederick Douglass, the iconic nineteenth-century slave and abolitionist, the foundations for his arguments in support of racial equality rested on natural rights and natural law - and the bold proclamation of the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal. But because many Americans never observed this principle - and in Douglass' day even renounced it - he made it his life's work to move the nation toward this vision of a more noble liberalism. Peter Myers now considers that effort and the natural rights arguments by which Douglass confronted race in America.Myers examines the philosophic core of Douglass' political thought, offering a greater understanding of its depth and coherence. He depicts Douglass as the leading thinker to apply the Founders' doctrine of natural rights to the plight of African Americans - an activist who grounded his arguments on the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and the inherent injustice not only of slavery but of any form of racial superiority.Myers first reconsiders Douglass' descriptive analysis of slavery, developing his arguments for its natural wrongness and for its natural weakness in conjunction with the right of resistance. He then examines Douglass' understandings of civil government in general and of the U.S. constitutional order in particular, exploring his argument on the Constitution's relation to slavery and his thoughts on the powers and duties of the federal and state governments in the matter of postslavery race relations - including new insight into Douglass' controversial do nothing doctrine.Myers argues that Douglass' political thought at its core is both more coherent and more defensible in substance than his critics acknowledge. He maintains that Douglass was right in finding the natural rights principles of the Declaration a sufficient theoretical basis for addressing the nation's racial problems and contends that his hopefulness for the demise of slavery and white supremacy was marked by moderation and realism.Myers finds in Douglass' political thought the foundations of a revitalized argument for the mainstream civil rights, integrationist tradition of African American political thought. His analysis offers a new way of looking at an important thinker, as well as a compelling case for hoping that race relations in America will improve over time.

Was Leo Strauss Wrong about John Locke?

Was Leo Strauss wrong about John Locke? Surely that he was has been the consensus among historians of political thought, though their reasons are sometimes at variance. The Cambridge school, influenced by the work of John Dunn, interprets Locke's work in the light of the Calvinism in his family background. Though attacked by spokesmen for the Church of England, Locke quickly gained admirers among dissenting clergy, for his psychology, his politics, and of course his program for religious toleration, and the proponents of the Calvinist interpreta tion explain why: His discourse closely tracks the theological language of his Calvinist contemporaries. Richard Ashcraft, meanwhile, sought to restore Locke's reputation as a revolutionary by investigating his role in English politics under the Restoration, albeit at the price of reducing the Two Treatises to a tract for the moment. James Tully would likewise save him from the charge of being a capitalist apologist, insisting Locke merely offered a defense of Whig landholding, with the responsibilities as well as the privileges embedded in the English law of estate. All these interpretations dismiss or disregard Strauss's account of Locke as an atheist in the mold of Hobbes and Spinoza who succeeded by his mastery of the art of esoteric writing in concealing his unbelief; as the most successful, because most prudent, proponent of the modern doctrine of natural rights, which revolutionized politics around the world; and as the theorist who prepared the way for modern capitalism by his vigorous defense of unlimited acquisition.

Author's Rejoinder

I find myself in a difficult situation, beleaguered on all sides. According to Finnis, Aquinas derived a doctrine of natural rights from his teaching on natural law. According to Kries, echoing Fr. Fortin, the two ideas, natural rights and natural law, are radically opposed to one another. This leaves me with a hope that some readers, faced by these extremely opposed assertions, may find a note of sweet reasonableness, a sort of golden mean, in my own position, namely that Aquinas did not himself articulate a doctrine of natural rights, but that this doctrine was not inconsistent with his teaching on natural law. The two doctrines could coexist, as they did in some later neoscholastic writings.Let us consider first the criticisms of Finnis. My own position was set out succinctly in a previous work. “When Aquinas was writing unreflectively and following the common practice of his age, he did use the word ius in a subjective sense in phrases like ius dominii. … Yet it remains true that he developed no explicit doctrine of subjective rights or natural rights.” This still seems to me a correct judgment. Moreover it corresponds quite closely to Finnis's reading of Aquinas in his earlier book.

From Natural Law to Human Rights: Or, Why Rights Talk Matters

Near the beginning of The Idea of Human Rights, Michael Perry states that “One of my principal goals … is to clarify and address the unusually murky subject of ‘moral relativism’—and to do so from the perspective of what can properly be called ‘natural law.”” This he defines, following D.J. O'Connor, as a view according to which “basic principles of morals and legislation are, in some sense or other, objective, accessible to reason and based on human nature.” Subsequently, he explains that the relation between belief in natural law and in human rights is one of presupposition; that is to say, a doctrine of natural rights presupposes the moral realism which in his view is the central core of natural law theories.As his discussion makes clear, Perry's claim that human rights presuppose a natural law should be understood as a theoretical claim. At the same time, it raises interesting historical issues. That is, when we examine classical accounts of the natural law, are these explicitly linked with doctrines of natural or human rights, or something recognizably similar? (Throughout this paper, I treat the terms “human” and “natural” rights as synonyms.) And more generally, what can we learn from the ways in which our forbears drew connections, or failed to do so, between a natural law and human rights?

A Short Discourse on the Tyrannical Government: Over Things Divine and Human, but Especially over the Empire and Those Subject to the Empire, Usurped by Some Who Are Called Highest Pontiffs, by William of Ockham, and: A Letter to the Friars Minor and Other Writings by William of Ockham

BOOK REVIEWS87 a year at Frederick's court in 1313-14. For a brief period it even proved possible to invest Frederick with a quasi-messianic role as the leader of a crusade to the east, or the sponsor of a mission to Tunisia. Royal evangelism and rampant anticlericalism, the legacy of years of continual interdict during the War of the Vespers, made Sicily a natural refuge for the Spiritual Franciscans. This caused another breach with the papacy whenJohn XXII turned against the Spirituals in 1317. The island was again placed under interdict, and the economic troubles and baronial brigandage of the 1320's and 1330's made the Church as impoverished , harassed, and unpopular as it had ever been. This book's title is melodramatic and misleading, but its other faults are few. Clifford Backman guides his readers with authority through notoriously complex themes, and his lively prose style disguises an impressive depth of scholarship . He has written an admirable first book, and while his arguments are unlikely to be accepted in full, his study will be required reading in its field. Norman Housley University ofLeicester A Short Discourse on the Tyrannical Government: Over Things Divine and Human, butEspecially over the Empire and Those Subject to the Empire, Usurped by Some Who Are Called Highest Pontiffs. By William of Ockham . Edited by Arthur Stephen McGrade; translated by John KilcuUen. [Cambridge Texts in the History of PoUtical Thought.] (New York: Cambridge University Press. 1992. Pp. xxxiv, 215. $4995 cloth; $1595 paperback .) A Letter to the Friars Minor and OtherWritings. ByWilliam of Ockham. Edited by Arthur Stephen McGrade and John Kilcullen; translated by John Kilcullen . [Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought.] (New York: Cambridge University Press. 1995. Pp. xl, 390. $64.95 cloth; $24.95 paperback .) These volumes present a translation of Ockham's Breviolquium or Short Discourse—the first complete translation of any of Ockham's political treatises —together with substantial translated excerpts from Ockham's other political works. The two volumes are very welcome. Ockham's political writings are among the most important of the medieval era but, until now, they have been inaccessible except to scholars who can read them in the original Latin. The editor and translator have done their work exceUently. The introductions of McGrade are clear and concise, the translations of Kilcullen fluent and accurate ,and the footnotes provide material that will be helpful to a student without being too intrusive. I have only one quibble about the translation—the persistent rendering of the word dominium as "lordship." This sometimes obscures Ockham's meaning and even leads to phrases that are hardly Enghsh at all. Thus 88BOOK REVIEWS Kilcullen has Ockham write that "someone is said to have lordship over a horse when he can manage it as he pleases" (p. 103); but in English we never say that a rider has "lordship" over his horse. The word needed here is "mastery." In other contexts "jurisdiction" or "ownership"would be appropriate. In the Short Discourse the editors made an excellent choice of a work to translate in full. This treatise presents in a clear, straightforward, and accessible fashion Ockham's case against the contemporary popes. He attached not only specific abuses of the papal power, but a whole theory ofpapal absolution that he regarded as corrupt and heretical. (It is important to note,however,that Ockham never attacked the papacy as such.) The theory of papal authority that Ockham rejected held that the pope, as vicar of Christ on earth, was supreme lord of the world in all temporal and spiritual affairs. All rights of government and rights of property were derived from him. It followed that no licit government and no valid claims to property existed outside the CathoUc Church. Against this Ockham argued that the right to institute rulers and the right to acquire property were granted by God to all peoples "without intermediary" (p. 91). Ockham made a significant contribution to the emerging doctrine of natural rights in this work, referring several times to the inviolabUity of "the rights and liberties granted by God and Nature." Although Ockham has often been treated as a merely destructive critic of the papacy...

Natural Rights in the Thirteenth Century: A Quaestio of Henry of Ghent

According to one recent account, in the preliberal epoch before the seventeenth century people did not think of individuals possessing inalienable rights to anything much less life, liberty, property, or even the pursuit of happiness.' The statement is not true, but it is excusable. Compared with the flood of writing on the classical rights theories of the early modern period,2 there has been only a thin trickle of work on medieval ideas concerning individual natural rights, or human rights as we say nowadays, rights inhering in the human person as such.3 Some modern authors see the seventeenth-century rights theories as a radical departure from ancient and medieval ways of thought;4 they are content to explain the ideas of Hobbes and Locke and Pufendorf by reference to some aspect of the intellectual, political, or economic life of the seventeenth century itself. C. B. MacPherson, for instance, emphasizing economic factors, inaugurated a minor academic industry when he interpreted Locke's teaching that everyone had a property right in his own person as a reflection of the possessive individualism of earlymodern capitalism.5 Other scholars, more discerningly, realize that we cannot adequately understand seventeenth-century writers without investigating the whole tradition of discourse that they inherited, a tradition that stretches back to the medieval epoch. But even these scholars have considered only a very limited range of medieval source material. They usually follow one of two strategies. Some see the modern doctrine of natural rights as a licit development of the medieval natural-law tradition classically formulated by Aquinas. This was

The Supreme Court and the Decline of Constitutional Aspiration. By Gary J. Jacobsohn (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1986. ix, 182p. $29.50).

How should the U.S. Constitution be interpreted, and upon what philosophical basis? What were the intentions of its framers concerning judicial interpretation? the doctrine of natural rights? the finality of Supreme Court decisions? To what extent are these intentions relevant to modern politics and jurisprudence? These and other issues are given a balanced and fresh treatment in Professor Jacobsohn's timely study.

Property and Natural Law in Rerum Novarum and the Summa Theologiae 2-2, Q. 66, AA, 1, 2, 7 by Abdon Ma. C. Josol, C.SS.R.

BOOK REVIEWS 539 groundbreaking work on the structure of scientific revolutions, Veatch argues that natural law philosophers need not be too defensive about the natural teleology on which their work rests. Such philosophers can come to the truth and to the reality of things while leaving to scientists the technological productivity which enhances modern society and which philosophers do not attempt to match. Science classifies and orders data according to certain paradigms so as to manipulate the world. Realistic philosophy works at a different level seeking to know things as they present themselves to common sense. The two need not conflict. Veatch's efforts to relate contemporary science and Aristotelian philosophy offer many good insights. Kuhn's analysis, however, is widely contested and needs some further justification. The day-to-day work of scientists, which seems to be at a remove from the debates on the philosophy of science, continues to have a profound impact on our world and deserves to be debated in detail. Veatch does not engage science at this level in his work. Overall, Veatch offers a provocative, interes.ting and cloor presentation on human rights. It shows both breadth and depth of insight. Like any good philosophical work, it provides more questions than answers. Yet, even for a reviewer predisposed toward natural law, the core arguments seem questionable and not completely convincing. The text engages but does not persuade. However, the engagement itself is stimulating and worthwhile. DeSales School of Theology Washington, D.0. JOHN w. CROSSIN, O.S.F.S. Property and Natural Law in Rerum Novarum and the Summa Theologiae 2-2, Q. 66, AA, 1, 2, 7. By ABDON MA. C. JosoL, C.SS.R. Rome: Academia Alfonsiana, 1985. Pp. xii + 239. In this dissertation dealing with Pope Leo XIII and the principle of private property, Abdon Ma. C. J osol, C.SS.R., investigates the teac.hings on natural law and private property found in (1) the manuals of Mateo Liberatore, S.J., and Tommaso Cardinal Zigliara, 0.P.; (2) their drafts of Rerum Novarnm; (3) Rerum Novarnm; (4) Summa Theologiae II-II, Q. 66, aa. 1 and 5; (5) ibid., Q. 66, a.2; and finally (6) Thomas's use of the phrase potestas prociirandi et dispensandi in the Summa Theologiae. He provides a real service in presenting the scope of the social question facing Leo and the efforts of the drafters of Rerum N ovarum to link the right to own private property with a Thomistic theory of natural law. He 540 BOOK REVIEWS also has an impressive bibliography which covers the European literature on Leo XIII and his times. There are two problems, in my judgment, with Fr. Josol's dissertation. First, he expresses his reservations about the soundness of Pope Leo's proposal concerning the social question. He thinks that the doctrine of natural rights to private property, as expressed in Rerum N ovarum and understood in the late nineteenth century, was a defense of large property owners (p. 9). He implies that Leo unwittingly provided a papal blessing for laissez-faire capitalists. Furthermore, thinks J osol, the chances of the industrial laborer be0oming a small land owner were very minimal if not wishful thinking (p. 9). Leo wanted the poor working man to receive a just wage, save, and invest his savings, for greater security, in land or moveable goods (Rerum Novarum 4). (The numbers in citations to Rerum Novarum are those assigned to paragraphs in Seven Famous Encyclicals, Glen Rock, N.Y.: Paulist Press, 1963.) By contrast, "the Socialists, in endeavoring to transfer the possessions of individuals to the community, strike at the interests of every wage earner, for they deprive him of the liberty of disposing his wages, and thus of all hope and possibility of increasing his stock and of bettering his condition in life" (ibid.). Leo taught that "the law should favor ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many people as possible to become owners" (Rerum Novarum 35). Leo opposed both laissez-faire capitalism and socialism. He wanted a fairer distribution of a nation's wealth, and the most reliable means of insuring this was a broa.der base of...

The Bible and Rights in the Franciscan Disputes Over Poverty

Among the more far-reaching consequences of the disputes over absolute poverty in the Franciscan Order was the emergence of a doctrine of natural rights. Or rather conflicting doctrines, drawn from conflicting interpretations of the life of Christ and the apostles, which crystallized in the debates between Pope John XXII and members of the Order in the 1320s and 1330s over Christ’s absolute poverty. Both the Pope, in denying that Christ had ever lived in absolute poverty, and his Franciscan opponents, who upheld the Franciscan doctrine that he had, arrived at rival conceptions of the rights involved in either possessing or renouncing temporal things.

Natural rights: A reappraisal

Are there any natural rights, and if there are, what is their foundation? This is a question that has received many answers over the years, almost to the exhaustion of all the possibilities, so that the very question raises doubts as to its meaningfulness. This paper puts forward no comprehensive answer to the question, but it does venture one more approach to an answer. First, a brief examination is offered of some theories of rights in order to fix the background of the particular question that I wish to consider here: are there rights that cannot be denied? The most extreme critic of any doctrine of natural rights, Jeremy Bentham, gave short shrift to this question with his well-known assertion: "Natural rights is simple nonsense; natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense - nonsense upon stilts."1 Bentham's chief objection to the idea of a law of natureseems to have lain in his belief that in suggesting and developing such an idea people did no more than state their feelings and then claim that these feelings were grounded in some objective reality. If there were truly nothing more than this to claims about natural law and rights we could not but agree with Bentham that to appeal to natural law in matters of morality is covertly to appeal to one's own moral prejudices. Our agreement would not require us to believe that there were no rights at all in a society, but it would mean that what rights there were were the creation of law, the creation of individual men with power and authority, "the results of some manifestation or other of the legislator's will. ''2 If there are other senses to the word 'right' besides that of a legal right, then they are parasitic upon it, and come about in an analogous way. If legal rights are created by a legislator's will, other rights might be established, for example, through social pressures exercised by the members of a society, or more generally, by prevalent social customs. The point is that there is no independent, absolute existence to rights. If the legislator bestows rights on the citizens of a state, he can also take them away from those who possess them; if social customs change, the tacit rights which they create change with them; no rights are inalienable. Law and rights are