I Wish Perry Mason Was Here.....

  Well, it happened again.  Something has slipped into my head and is bouncing around until it finds a way out.  I was watching a film yesterday, titled True Grit with Jeff Bridges.  By the way, I think I like the John Wayne version better.  I have to admit, the new one has such realistic dialogue to fit the time period, I found myself listening very carefully to understand all they were saying.  Anyway, in one scene, Mattie is talking about Natural Law, a deep subject for a fourteen year old.  I decided to look into it further....

  Natural law or the law of nature (Latin: lex naturalis) has been described as a law whose content is set by nature and therefore is universal.  As classically used, natural law refers to the use of reason to analyze human nature and deduce binding rules of moral behavior.  Although natural law is often conflated with common law, the two are distinct in that natural law is a view that certain rights or values are inherent in or universally cognizable by virtue of human reason or human nature, while common law is the legal tradition whereby certain rights or values are legally cognizable by virtue of judicial recognition or articulation.

  The U.S. Declaration of Independence states that it has become necessary for the United States to assume "the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them". Some early American lawyers and judges perceived natural law as too tenuous, amorphous and evanescent a legal basis for grounding concrete rights and governmental limitations.  Natural law did, however, serve as authority for legal claims and rights in some judicial decisions, legislative acts, and legal pronouncements.  Robert Lowry Clinton (associate professor and director of graduate studies in the department of political science at Southern Illinois University) argues that the U.S. Constitution rests on a common law foundation and the common law, in turn, rests on a classical natural law foundation.

That old law about 'an eye for an eye' leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing. - Martin Luther King, Jr.