Common Law and Natural Law in America

Speaking to today''s flourishing conversations on both law morality and religion and the religious foundations of law politics and society Common Law and Natural Law in America is an ambitious four-hundred-year narrative and fresh re-assessment of the varied American interactions of ''common law'' the stuff of courtrooms and ''natural law'' a law built on human reason nature and the mind or will of God. It offers a counter-narrative to the dominant story of common law and natural law by drawing widely from theological and philosophical accounts of natural law as well as primary and secondary work in legal and intellectual history. With consequences for today''s natural-law proponents and critics alike it explores the thought of the Puritans Revolutionary Americans and seminal legal figures including William Blackstone Joseph Story Christopher Columbus Langdell Oliver Wendell Holmes and the legal realists.