The
Search for Natural Law
(An etymology of “Jurisprudence”)
© 1985-2007 by Frederick Graves, JD
All Rights Reserved
Introduction
What is Natural Law?
To unravel this mystery we explore the meaning of Jurisprudence and by understanding
this complex word gain a clearer view of our American heritage of law, how we
came to the problems we now face, and what we can do together to make things
better for the future of our children and the world.
Our search for Natural Law begins with understanding Jurisprudence.
I tracked the etymology and traced the history of Jurisprudence from the
Roman senate, where
the word had its birth, to today’s law schools and the legal literature of our
courts, where the venerable old term has too long been ludicrously misused and
its potential for the improvement of our systems of law almost universally
ignored.
This is no accident, I found. The meaning of Jurisprudence was
intentionally hidden from us by humanist philosophers, jurists, textbook
writers, and professors of the 20th Century, who replaced the old
meaning of Jurisprudence with a new idea, an idea with many names, an idea that
seeks to hold the world in its grip and threatens at this present hour by just
such deceits as this to establish a global oligarchy of such unprecedented
power and control that wise men and women are now resolving to restore the
wisdom of Jurisprudence to our land by promoting Public Legal Education so our
children will no longer be deceived.
The moguls
of modern thinking this past century claimed we no longer need the old idea of
Jurisprudence. They said
the idea is a barrier to mankind’s progress. Some went so far as to contend
right-thinking people should work to divest our land of such unscientific
notions.
So, by fiat of scholars and judges and fools the meaning of
Jurisprudence, a treasure men once died for, was abandoned for a hundred years
or so in the dusty pages of old books.
Today we are turning
again to the heritage of our past to understand what the old word once stood
for, and by its wisdom we are rediscovering Natural Law and finding hope for a
new tomorrow.
Jurisprudence is derived from two Roman roots—juris and prudens—the Latin words for
Justice and Prudence.
Yet, the definition
one finds in any modern dictionary is “the science of law”. Something vital has
obviously been omitted. There is a peculiar gap between “science of law” and
the root words juris and prudens. The ideas are not even
remotely similar!
Why has this word been re-defined? What did it mean before? Who
re-defined it? What was their motive? These questions will all be answered as
you read on, and as each question is answered you will be learning how to
re-establish what’s been purposely stolen from you!
ETYMOLOGY - Juris
Juris is the genitive (possessive) case
singular of the Latin noun jus,
meaning “right”, i.e., that which is good, productive, healthful, uplifting,
empowering, nurturing, peaceful, joyful, and liberating for both individuals
and nations.
This is not the same word we use when we say a person has rights.
Jus is “right” as when
we say a person did what’s right, what’s good, what’s loving.
The Sanskrit equivalent is yoh,
meaning “health”.
A near equivalent is the Hebrew yod, meaning “source of light”.
In Persia’s
writings of Zoroaster it is yaozdadaiti,
meaning “that which purifies”.
Other words equivalent to jus
relate to stretching a thing till it is perfectly straight or bending it
carefully to make the perfect corner of a square or intersection of a cross.
Note that jus in Latin
is not just another word for “law”. The words “right” and “law” are distinct
ideas in Latin. Each has its own identity. Each stands on its own. Each is
different from the other.
The Latin name for “law” is lex,
not jus.
Lex is the mechanism of
state power, force, compulsion, the written law (right or wrong).
Lex is the body of
codified precepts and rules by which governments control people, the law that
validates the force of armies and gives power to orders of magistrates.
Lex is law men make for themselves.
Jus is something altogether different. Jus refers to that which is
proper and fair in fact. Jus is what’s right, whether man’s lex makes it legal
or illegal. Jus is a reality revealed only by Eternal Truth, transcending the
edicts of man’s courts and legislatures.
Jus is the first root of Jurisprudence … not lex.
Other languages also make a distinction between eternal “right” and
man’s written “law”.
To the French, what’s “right” is droit, while their written “law”
is loi.
The German says what’s “right” is recht, while his code of rules is gesetz.
We would be wise in this nation to make the distinction and teach our
children the difference.
Jus is the rule of
Eternal Truth that dictates human consequences in accordance with our actions
and failures to act. Jus is the
hidden law of nature, what some men call Natural Law, an unavoidable reality
that works behind the scenes to dictate the outcome of our behavior. Jus is the unseen Hand of God that
rewards good and punishes evil, no matter what our law may say is right or
wrong, no matter what public opinion demands, no matter how angrily we rebel
against its supreme authority.
Jus is Natural Law
supernaturally rewarding good and tearing down evil, utterly heedless of our
human statutes, courts, or legislatures.
Jus is jus, no matter what our lex may say.
Jurisprudence is the search for this Natural Law that transcends our
statutes and decrees.
Lex is “law” in fact.
Lex is written law,
codes, ordinances, human edicts, rule by force, the power of the state, the
gavel of our courts, the steel chains and iron doors of our prisons.
If we are wise our lex seeks
jus.
When we foolishly create lex
that ignores jus, then
Natural Law teaches us our folly by imposing unpleasant consequences that
reveal our errors as surely as night follows day.
George Washington called this Eternal Truth “Providence”,
a force beyond the reach of reason that, like an Unseen Hand, unavoidably moves
in our individual lives and in the lives of nations to decide the outcome of
our human efforts. If we are loving and kind the Unseen Hand rewards us,
sometimes with mysterious benefits we could never have predicted. If we are
selfish and cruel, Natural Law sooner or later brings suffering. Though the
effects of jus may be delayed
for a time, they are never escaped. Natural Law obeys no human legislation. Its
rule is heedless of our most eloquent demands. It is what it is. Only fools
ignore it.
As they say on the street, “What goes around comes around.” Natural Law
is at work.
Jus is eternal and
unchanging.
Lex is whatever we
decide to make it.
Though the two ideas are clearly distinct, the differences outstripped
the understanding of many 20th Century writers and law professors
who interchanged them at will, obliterating the distinction. As a consequence,
our heritage was robbed of the wisdom that once sought to understand eternal
principles. Men wrote and taught about a brave new world waiting on time’s
horizon where lex would always
be jus (because they’d hide the
difference from us).
They made Jurisprudence a mere science, robbing our foundation of faith
in self-evident truths such as those Thomas Jefferson wrote into our
Declaration of Independence. They sought to hide the wisdom of jus, promoting laws to control
human behavior instead of laws counseling people to submit to Natural Law and
gain its benefits.
Today’s generation will Lift the Lamp of Liberty, promote Public Legal
Education, and restore Jurisprudence in our law schools, legislatures, courts,
and even in our public schools where children will learn about the Law beyond
our books. Natural Law.
The law degree conferred on students at graduation from most law schools
is called Juris Doctor, yet law
students for years have been taught mostly lex, while jus was ignored as an intellectual
dinosaur of significance only to legal philosophers, of no use at all to
aspiring attorneys and judges. The degree conferred by these schools should be
called Lex Doctor, since lex is what law schools have
emphasized for years.
We will correct this problem by teaching the principles of jus-tice in our public schools.
Jurisprudence seeks to understand Natural Law and to conform our statutes
accordingly.
Jurisprudence is Wisdom seeking Justice.
Atheists and others deceived by humanism’s lies want nothing to do with
Eternal Truth in the deliberations of law. This is partly because religionists
like William Blackstone wrote books in the Nineteenth Century confusing Natural
Law with Biblical Law. The one insists truth is relative. The other insists
truth can only be discerned by studying scripture. Both fall short of the mark.
Though scripture proposes mandates to inculcate morality, Bibles merely record
what God already established. Natural Law existed before Moses, before Abraham,
before Adam, and even before formation of the stars and space itself! This is
the secret of the ages fools despise and wise men cherish. It is the foundation
of our Hope.
Truth is revealed only by Truth.
Jurisprudence searches for Natural Law so it can spare us the
consequence of ignorance.
Popular writers of the last century stupidly insisted there is no Natural
Law to determine the destinies of men and nations, no God that rewards good and
punishes evil. The result was a century of legislation and court administration
that increasingly benefited international corporations and prostituted justice
for the sake of political expedience.
We will learn to love Truth and Lift the Lamp together to enlighten the
ignorance of those who see our nation on the road to destruction and don’t know
why.
This is why!
Look and learn!
Sir John William Salmond wrote soon after the Great War, “Our purpose is
to consider in respect of their origins and relations the various names and
titles which have been borne by law in different languages in the hope
juridical terms may be found to throw some light upon the ideas of which they
are manifestations.” (Jurisprudence, Sir John Salmond, Sweet and
Maxwell, London, 1920.) Sir Salmond
distinguishes between the two ideas of law, clarifying the meaning of
Jurisprudence. “If we inquire after the cause of this duplication of terms we
find it in the double aspect of the juridical concept of law. Law arises from a
union of justice and force, of right and might. It is justice recognized and
established by authority. It is right realized through power. Since it has two
sides and aspects, it may be looked at from two different points of view, and
we find it has two different names. Jus
is law from the point of view of right and justice; lex is law from the point of view
of authority and force.” (Ibid.)
Shouldn’t the formal study of lex
(largely controlled by a private organization called the American Bar
Association) that leads to a Juris Doctor degree and prepares life-long careers
for lawyers, judges, and most legislators be tempered by a balanced view toward
jus?
Each of us should ask leadership this question and urge neighbors and
friends to demand that our children at every age be taught about jus in our schools! Every American
citizen has a right to know the difference between jus or right and lex or force. Understanding this
and sharing its truth with your neighbors and friends is essential to building
a better tomorrow for your children.
Together we are making a difference.
We are correcting the errors of our past through Public Legal Education.
Thomas Cowan wrote in 1956, jus
is “the law as it ought to be
rather than as it is.” He said the “abiding concern” of Jurisprudence is the
nature of jus-tice. (The
American Jurisprudence Reader, Thomas A. Cowan, Oceana Publications, New
York, 1956.)
Consider the Scales of Justice. In one pan of the balance is lex (written law, law as it is).
In the other pan is jus
(Natural Law, law as it ought to be). What greater goal for legislators and
judges than to balance the two, amending lex to conform with the
inescapable jus? Why should the
truth be hidden any longer. Natural Law is reality, not illusion!
Together we are teaching our children the difference.
Beware of those who say, “They are one and the same!”
They are not the same.
They are not at all the same!
Those who say this are enemies of truth and, therefore, enemies of
mankind.
Each word represents a different idea.
We can no more change the meaning of jus than we can change the path of
Jupiter!
Jus is jus.
Right is right—and it will never change!
Lex is lex.
Law is law—but law must change
until it holds the Scales in balance according to the plan for American Justice
that too many have already given their lives to establish and preserve.
Establish and Preserve. Jachin and Boaz. The two pillars of Solomon’s
temple. Twin towers of truth inescapable. Jus must be established and
preserved for future generations.
Wise men search to discern Natural Law so they may avoid its inescapable
consequence.
By changing human behavior through wise laws we can avoid the painful
result of living in disobedience to Natural Law.
It doesn’t matter what we “think” should happen if we do a certain
thing. Natural Law decrees the consequences. This is how we learn the “hard
knocks” lessons of life. This truth is not apparent to young people, however
older men and women know that, as Newton said is true in
physics, every action has a reaction. It doesn’t make a bit of difference what
we “think” is fair or unfair. Natural Law is inescapable. Man’s laws will never
change it!
Eternal Truth is eternally true.
No one is immune to the effects of Natural Law. Interpretation has
nothing to do with it. What one chooses to believe has no effect on the Reality
of this present moment, regardless of New Age teachings to the contrary. What
we believe may change tomorrow, but today is what it is. Today is what we need
to change, or tomorrow may take a fiendish turn and make an end of us all.
Blind hope, like good intentions, will only lead us into greater darkness.
Natural law decrees it so.
Natural Law determines the outcome of our temporal decisions, whether as
individuals or as nations. It cannot be avoided by wishful thinking or volumes
of legislation.
We ignore Truth at our peril.
Atheistic ignorance imperils our children who are too young to
understand.
The lamp of Jurisprudence is lifted by our cooperative human energies,
and by its wisdom alone we will provide a better future for our children.
Eternal Truth never changes.
Natural Law is never violated.
Therefore, we begin to obey an ancient moral imperative, amending
temporal law (lex) until it
encourages everyone to live in the reverence of Natural Law (jus). And though eternity be too
short a span for this accomplishment, it will never cease to be the object of
our most committed energies.
This is the highest form of loving our neighbors even as we love
ourselves!
We strive for lex so we
can secure human happiness through wise obedience to jus.
This has been the call of Jurisprudence to wise people of every age. Let
us heed the call today!
Jus alone justifies
governments and legitimizes their temporal power … not lex.
If we say lex is jus simply because it is lex, we err, for jus is the Eternal Law of Right,
not man’s law of might. The two are not equivalent.
The nemesis of modern juridical thinking is that 20th Century
jurists, emancipated by their elitist disdain for religion’s imperatives of
Eternal Truth, sought to administer jus
based solely on their own secular ideas of “justice” without acknowledging
Natural Law, denying the innate nature of an Ordered Cosmos and the consequence
of ignoring the Greater Truth that the cosmos in which we live is inescapably
subject to an overriding logos,
an Eternal Law that determines the fate of men and nations in accordance with
our actions.
In this rebellion wisdom died.
An insidious legal tyranny began to raise its ugly head, preparing all
to be enslaved by judicial arrogance.
What got built was lex
and more lex (not jus), while people suffered under
the gavel of fools.
Others observed modernists’ tendency to ignore Natural Law in matters of
Jurisprudence. Cobban predicted dire consequences when he wrote in 1941, “It
would seem we must acquiesce to the abandonment of Eternal Truth by the modern
world, even though to do so is to accept the rule of arbitrary human will in
the life of society. Henceforth there can be no ethical standards of social and
political behavior, because will
cannot make right.” [emphasis added] (The Crisis of Civilization, J.
Cape, London, 1941.)
Will cannot make right.
Lex cannot make jus … no, not in a million
lifetimes.
Montesquieu saw more than 200 years ago the emergence of this idea that
seeks to hold the world in its grip. He admonished us to see that Natural Law
is real. “They who assert that a blind fatality produced the various effects we
behold in this world talk very absurdly, for can any thing be more unreasonable
than to pretend a blind fatality could be productive of intelligent beings?” He
based his thinking on the existence of “a prime reason” and said that “laws are
relations subsisting between the prime reason and man.” He said, “Particular
intelligent beings may have laws of their own making, but they have some
likewise which they never made. Before there were intelligent beings and
written laws, there were relations of justice. To say there is nothing just or
unjust but what is commanded or forbidden by positive laws is the same as
saying that before one draws a circle all the radii are not equal.” (The
Spirit of The Laws, Baron de Montesquieu, edited by Thomas Nugent, Hafner
Publishing Company, New York,
1949.)
ETYMOLOGY - Prudens
Now, let’s
examine the second root of Jurisprudence.
Prudentia is “practical
understanding or sagacity”. (Oxford Latin Dictionary,
Oxford Press, Oxford,
1982.)
Wisdom. Foresight. Common-sense.
Prudens is the adjective
form of prudentia, a
contraction of providens,
comprised of pro and videns, “forward” and “seeing”.
Thus Prudence is “the power of seeing in advance, the faculty of looking ahead,
anticipating the future, prescience.” (Ibid.)
Prudence recognizes that all our acts have consequences dictated by a
Natural Law not of man’s making.
Prudence seeks to avoid foreseeable adverse consequences and maximize the
probability of success by looking ahead to the unavoidable effect of Natural
Law.
Prudence is the highest form of wisdom.
It cautions us to, “Consider the foreseeable consequences before you
act.”
Carl Claudy wrote that Prudence is one of the four cardinal virtues
recognized by ancient civilizations. The others are Justice, Fortitude, and
Temperance. “Consider Prudence as the wisdom of both heart and mind, and it
becomes something high and holy, much more than mere precaution, the modern
meaning of the word.” (A Treasury of Thought, edited by Carl Glick,
Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York,
1953.)
Yet, if we say Jurisprudence is a high and holy wisdom of heart and
mind, a prescience to find Eternal Right and establish Justice by making lex comply with jus, secular scholars may attempt
to denounce us as religious fanatics instead of wise citizens seeking a better
world for our children. The secular scholars, judges, legislators, and law
professors of this recent century tried to build a world where there would be
no recognition of Natural Law. They strongly disagreed with those who think lex should seek jus by the high and holy wisdom of
Jurisprudence, blind to the undesirable consequence of ignoring self-evident
truth.
Solomon, the wisest jurist of all, said, “Prudence is the principle
thing; therefore get Prudence, and with all thy getting get understanding.”
(Proverbs 4:7.) Under-standing is what is so difficult for many people. They
don’t want to “stand under” Truth. They want to change Truth to fit their
separate interpretations, refusing to see that Truth remains unchanged by their
private concepts and theories, however eloquently expressed they may be.
If we ask how Prudence is obtained, Solomon says, “Revere the Truth!”
(Proverbs 9:10.)
We are restoring this nation to its high and holy purpose once again by
insisting that our leaders recognize that Truth exists apart from our
imaginations.
We are demanding that those who seek to lead us submit themselves to the
decrees of Natural Law and administer our statutes and ordinances in such
manner as will best insure that we derive the greatest benefit from the Unseen
Hand that only fools deny.
In this we are promised a great and lasting victory for all mankind!
CHANGES IN USAGE
Jurisprudence
today is just another word for law.
We have medical jurisprudence, for example, a body of law developing
around the field of medicine. There is commercial jurisprudence, a body of
business law. We have criminal jurisprudence, the codes by which we protect
society from infractors of our law.
In none of these applications, however, is the word being used in its
true sense.
In the 60 years from 1925 to 1985, the Supreme Court used the word
Jurisprudence in no less than 576 cases. Each time it was just another word for
“law”. Not once in that period of time did any Justice undertake to define this
much forgotten but critically important word.
The Roman jurist Ulpian said, “Juris prudentia est divinarum atque
humanarum rerum notitia, justi atque injusti scientia,” i.e., Jurisprudence is
a knowledge both human and divine, to understand what is just and what is
unjust.
Cicero
penned the same words in 43 B.C.
Blackstone quotes Aristotle, “Jurisprudence is the principal and most
perfect branch of ethics.” (Study of Law, Blackstone, 1809.)
In 1628 Sir Edward Coke praised Jurisprudence as a “gladsome light”.
By 1762, however, a new form of reason was beginning to appear when men
like Adam Smith began saying, “Jurisprudence is the theory of rules by which
governments ought to be directed.” (Lectures on Jurisprudence, Adam
Smith, Oxford University
Press, Oxford, 1978.)
This was only a slight shift of meaning, but the hole was in the dike.
No one complained.
Perhaps no one even noticed.
A flood of error had begun.
In the tumultuous years that followed, Jurisprudence fell on hard times
philosophically.
Jeremy Bentham wrote in 1827, “As to the jurisprudentialist, his most
common state is a sort of middle state between impostor and dupe.”
Clearly, a new idea was gaining sway.
The old idea was under attack by fools who sought to lead us.
By the end of the Nineteenth Century, considerations of Jurisprudence as
“a knowledge human and divine” were trashed. The ancient wisdom of Eternal
Truth was replaced by a new enlightenment called science (wherein nothing is
true except in relation to other things). No longer could a thing be true in
and of itself. Modernists were certain they would find the answers to life’s
questions without resort to any worn‑out Cosmic Principle of Unchanging Truth
or Natural Law that might determine the consequence of human behavior. In their
zeal they ridiculed those who doubted science’s ability to solve all the
problems of humanity.
The New Age rebelled against Reality itself, claiming all we know is
mere “illusion”.
In 1879, Austin
distinguished “general Jurisprudence or the philosophy of positive law from
what may be styled particular Jurisprudence or the science of law.”
Positive law was now in one pan of the balance. In the other pan was
science.
At the end of the first World War God was dying. God let boys be killed
at the Marne. What sort
of God would create a world of hateful death and pain?
The God of religionists seemed to have failed mankind, so scholars
(secretly hoping to be gods themselves) wrote their epitaph for Jurisprudence:
“God is dead.”
Soon the news was whispered in the halls of every law school and in the
courtrooms of our land where Jurisprudence once was honored as supreme wisdom.
“Science!” was the hue and cry.
“God is dead, so we must save ourselves! We are God, and science is our
Name!”
Jurisprudence was reduced to theories and hypotheses, a game for
scholars, just another sterile branch of science propped precariously on the
pinnings of statistical mathematics and the imperatives of commercial
necessity. No longer did we have a high and holy search for Natural Law. No
longer did we seek to discern Eternal Truth by which human acts receive
immutable consequences.
Natural Law was ignored. Jurisprudence was lost by perversion of its
name.
LeBuffe and Hayes said, “Jurisprudence is the practical science which
investigates the nature, origin, and development of law.” (Jurisprudence,
Francis LeBuffe and James Hayes, Fordham University
Press, New York, 1938.)
Jurisprudence was now science, and science alone.
Then science sought Truth, while insisting no such thing exists! The
paradox of fools.
By 1957, scholars striving to define Jurisprudence said, “The result of
our investigation thus far is to establish the negative conclusion that
nowadays the word ‘Jurisprudence’ does not mean certain things. Indeed, it
would appear the word has no usual meaning, and it is no cynicism to say that
‘Jurisprudence’ means whatever anyone wants it to mean.” (Jurisprudence,
R.W.M. Dias and G.B.J. Hughes, Butterworth & Company, London,
1957.)
Atheists scored what threatened to be lasting victory in academia, but
people today are beginning to Lift the Lamp together, promoting Public Legal
Education, so the ignorance of yesterday’s atheism is being displaced by the
wisdom of Jurisprudence once more.
Today’s generation is working together to prevent the triumph of
ignorance over truth.
From the ancient Roman jurists through the rebellions of International
Republicanism, atrocities of German Socialism, and lastly the horrors of
an Atomic Age and Global Terrorism, we see the intentional removal of knowledge
human and divine, of what is just and what is unjust.
We see today the consequence of 20th Century atheists’
corruption of Jurisprudence into a mere science for social engineering.
We recognize the error of their premise that American Law is something
judges do and mortals merely muddle through.
We are no longer deceived.
Who knows best the meaning of Jurisprudence—the Roman jurists, Ulpian
and Cicero, or some conceited clique of modernist New
England law professors?
Patriotic America
is rising up to demand that Natural Law be recognized by our leaders!
Not the “natural law” explained by Blackstone in his treatises as the
edicts of God set out in the Hebrew-Christian Bible, but the Natural Law that
is the logos written of by the
Apostle John at the beginning of his Gospel.
“In the beginning was the Logos, the Eternal Law that was with God and
is God!”
That Law does not change.
Apples fall from trees. They do not float upward.
Water freezes at temperatures much below 32º Fahrenheit.
Nations fall and humanity suffers when leadership ignores the
consequence of Natural Law that is the immutable Logos of this universe.
HISTORY
Note how misuse
of a word and failure to discriminate between jus and lex was prodded by atheists’
rejection of Providence
and the unwillingness of 20th Century leaders to take a stand for
Truth!
A little leaven leavens the whole lump.
Errors should be opposed quickly or they grow like weeds.
Only Truth is true. Nothing else is.
History is a record of errors and the courage that successfully opposes
them.
Now that 1984 is history, we laugh at Orwell’s predictions. Nothing
notable happened in 1984. No beast took over to rule our lives and regiment our
thinking. We’re not being spied on by telescreens like those that pried into
Winston’s and Julia’s intimacies. We are smugly certain Big Brother is not
watching us … at least not in any Orwellian sense.
Yet, we miss the darker implication of Orwell’s story if we think 1984
was the year we’d see Big Brother take over. Orwell predicted change would not
be noticed till much later. He suggested the insidious central control of
society his book foretold would come so slowly that no one would even notice …
and that it would come long after 1984!
“How’s the dictionary getting on?” Winston asked his comrade Syme, who
worked with him in the Research Department.
“We’re getting the language into its final shape,” Syme answered. “By
the year 2050 at the very latest not a single human being will be alive who
could understand the conversation we are having now.” 1984, George Orwell.
So begins Orwell’s story of mere mortals struggling with tyrannies of
power, an ageless saga of unbridled oligarchy bent on self perpetuation without
concern for its harsh human consequences, heedless of history’s hard lessons,
and committed to build a new tomorrow by destroying the past’s traditions, art,
and language.
Wonderful, the power of words and the power of those who can alter
words’ meanings!
It is our language that makes us human, not prehensile thumbs or ability
to stand erect on hind legs. With words we build reality out of dreams. With
words we prepare for our future. With words we preserve the wisdom of our past
… or toss it foolishly aside.
With words we hide from truth by revising reality to suit our selfish purposes.
The choice of seeking to adjust society to the imperatives of Natural
Law or following after man’s amusement is again before us, as it has been
presented to every age. We may work together to establish Jurisprudence on the
principle that Reality dictates a consequence of morality both to individuals
and nations—or we may turn from Truth to seek instead the wisdom of the strong
and permit ourselves to be ruled by an elite caste of atheists whose goal is
pleasure for themselves no matter what the cost to our posterity. This is the
timeless choice, and every age acts on it one way or another. Failure to choose
is nonetheless choice and, either way, we cannot escape the consequence of our
decision or refusal to decide.
Fortunately, many are choosing to restore the wisdom of our American
Heritage.
The potency of Jurisprudence to wisely discern the inescapable dictates
of Natural Law (Truth that ultimately controls our destinies) lies in sharing
its wisdom with the people themselves. As we do so we empower the populace to
wisely counsel lawmakers and judges. As patriotic men and women Lift the Lamp
of Public Legal Education, Jurisprudence will revive from the forgotten,
yellowed pages of old books. We will take it up again, avoiding the unpleasant
consequence of violating Natural Law, submitting to Truth. In this way God will
bless our land with peace and prosperity for future generations. We will awaken
wisdom from its slumber and turn our children’s hearts to goodness once more
(as the founders of our nation intended us to do).
Jurisprudence will offer its promise till the end of time, in spite of
our eloquent debates, heedless of scholarly writing and political
ear-scratching rhetoric. Jurisprudence cannot be kept imprisoned in books nor
trapped within the frailty of a single human mind. It must live.
Truth will prove the wisdom of Jurisprudence as we teach our children
this knowledge holy and divine. We will learn again how to discern what is right
and just. Our nation will once more base her laws on a Jurisprudence we share
and approve together in unity.
At present, however, we have no unifying Jurisprudence in the United States of America,
so we must work together to Lift the Lamp and put aside our anger and petty
differences!
Until now, right and wrong has been whatever a majority of television
viewers say it is.
We have no Jurisprudence in this nation … and that is our greatest
danger!
By the force of law our lives are either blessed by Liberty
or stolen by tyranny.
We have a choice to make. We can base our laws on principles or
convenient preference.
Rudolph von Ihering wrote, “The end of the law is peace. The means to
that end is war. So long as the law is compelled to hold itself in readiness to
resist the attacks of wrong (and this it will be compelled to do until the end
of time) it cannot dispense with war. The life of the law is a struggle, a
struggle of nations, of state power, of classes, and of individuals.” (The
Struggle of Law, Rudolph von Ihering, Callaghan and Company, Chicago,
1879.)
The struggle of law is real, yet we can overcome the most determined foe
if we work in harmony to restore our Jurisprudence based on Natural Law.
Without such a Jurisprudence, all law is tyranny.
Only by a Jurisprudence can we set limits for law and justify its means
by being mindful of its ends.
Natural Law is self-evident to men and women of wisdom and good
conscience.
At the beginning of the 20th Century, there was a great
revolution in Western Jurisprudence. Before that time, Jurisprudence rested on
the premise that there exist immutable, eternal principles of Justice, i.e.,
self evident truths. Reality was no illusion. Truth was absolute, not relative.
Natural Law was an accepted fact. There was consensus that legislatures and
courts had a moral duty to make written law conform to Natural Law and thereby
protect people from the consequence of their own self-interested folly. Wise
men took this for granted.
An example of this understanding flowed from Jefferson’s pen when he wrote, “All men are
created equal, endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights”. This was
considered self-evident.
All reasonable persons agreed in those days that each of us inhabits a
world that comes complete with rules, Natural Law that dictates consequences to
human behavior, unwritten principles we need to understand and publish for the
sake of our children’s future.
Blackstone said, “Man is entirely a dependent being, subject to the laws
of his Creator, to whose will he must conform.” He is not saying we do not have
free will. Not at all. Rather he and those who followed his teaching believed
that none of us can be completely happy so long as we refuse to live in harmony
with Natural Law. Truth alone decides our happiness. Joy flows from our own
behavior, the Golden Rule, and knowledge that our every word and deed cause
predictable results fixed forever by Eternal Truth, the Logos whose edicts never vary.
Blackstone’s “Classical Jurisprudence” took Eternal Truth and Natural
Law for granted.
Change came when our leaders began to use law as a tool for social
engineering. They rejected principles, replacing them with practicality. There
were no absolutes. Darwinism was their Jurisprudence.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., said in 1881, “Law is what the courts do in
fact”, and by that sweeping sentence he condemned the heritage of Faith that
was this nation’s birthright.
Professors still insist, “Law is whatever nine men say it is,” meaning
whatever the United States Supreme Court says. This statement reflects a lack
of Jurisprudence. It is an untenable and fearful excuse for Jurisprudence. It
has no principles to sustain it.
We innately know it is error for our law to be only what our judges say
it is.
Yet, throughout the 20th Century our Jurisprudence was
subverted by an atheistic plan to save humanity through social engineering.
Their law is based on theories of social science. Their methods are mass
propaganda and statistics. Their goals are the objectives of secular humanism,
a vain philosophy our Supreme Court has given the noble title of religion.
This is the idea that has the world in its grip.
Truth is relative, depending on man’s interpretation, so man must set
standards for mankind’s behavior, heedless of the consequences of Natural Law.
It is a horrid lie, yet it has taken root because patriotic men and women have
not before been willing to work for Public Legal Education as they now are
doing by ever increasing numbers. The Lamp is being lifted today.
Our nation will no longer follow fools who deny Truth in order to
promote the lies of humanism that insidiously infect our age with destructive
deceit. Good people are beginning to stand up for Truth and oppose the lies
humanists sold throughout the preceding century.
Humanists were as real as and Bolsheviks. Their plan was the
creation of a purely atheistic society to be in place by the beginning of our
new millennium. Their society would be guided by principles of communal
ownership of property. The quest for “the good life” was their central task.
The men and women who supported their views were unlike the rank and file
populace. They enthusiastically promoted the cause of atheism while the rest of
20th Century society basked in a deceptive sense of economic security that
lulled them into a dangerous complacency from which we are now at last
awakening.
Social science is the sum of atheistic jurisprudence. Statistics is the
basis for its morality.
A new world order run by atheists was their stated objective.
In 1933, the humanists published their first manifesto. Some of its
statements follow, paraphrased from the 1933 text. [You are invited to read the
original to test my abridgment. It can be found on the internet.]
1. The universe is self-existing and
not created.
2. Man is the product of evolution.
3. Man has no soul, and
consciousness dies with the body.
4. Culture and civilization are
products of evolution.
5. There is no cosmic consequence
controlling human values.
6. Goals based on eternal values are
obsolete.
7. Man must use governments to
establish right and wrong.
8. The only rule of life is to live it
to the fullest.
9. The only goal is self fulfillment.
10. Spiritual life will not be
allowed.
11. Sentiment, hopes and wishful
thinking will not be allowed.
12. Religions shall be reconstituted
as quickly as possible.
13. Socialist communism shall replace
acquisitive capitalism.
In 1973, the second manifesto revealed the humanist plan for one world
government, dedicated to atheism. A few points touched upon in that document
follow, paraphrased from the 1973 text.
1. False hopes of heaven are harmful.
2. Reasonable minds look to other
methods of survival.
3. The 21st Century should be the
humanistic century.
4. Humanism intends a secular
society on a planetary scale.
5. There is no divine purpose for
the human species.
6. Religion is an obstacle to human
progress.
7. Ethics is autonomous and
situational.
8. Abortion and divorce are human
rights.
9. Sexual and homosexual exploration
are human rights.
10. Euthanasia and suicide are human
rights.
11. The limits of national
sovereignty must be transcended.
12. A transnational federal government
should be established.
No high and holy wisdom based on Eternal Principles of Justice would be
permitted in the grand utopia these fools envisioned. Jurisprudence would be
forgotten, and in its place they would erect legal mechanisms, public policies,
and a promise of the good life for all who agree with their godless proposals.
They condemned as heresy the thought we humans might place our hope in an
Eternal Law of Love and Truth to guide and ennoble our lives.
Their New Age became the political goal of the last century, however
their Jurisprudence was without foundation and so their movement is crumbling
as men and women of conscience and wisdom turn back to Truth in this new
millennium.
Their classroom secularists refrained from divine considerations when
they spoke of law, so their system began to break down in accordance with the
rule of Natural Law … predictably.
Their religion threatened to displace philosophies and beliefs that
teach Eternal Truth, a march of resolute ignorance that would not retreat one
single inch, yet it is this weakness that gives us today the power to overcome
their lies and restore Jurisprudence once again as the high and holy wisdom it
will ever be!
CHOICES
Perhaps you now see why we
heard so much about “human rights” this last century. It is a humanist term.
Atheists who gained power after World War II had no real Jurisprudence. They
attempted to lead our generation by the nose to a New Tomorrow we would not
find to our liking! We tried to be fair and liberal, but we were neither just
nor prudent.
The price of 20th Century foolishness has not yet been counted!
Scholars of the last century were deceitful barons of knowledge
wandering about concealing or uprooting ancient landmarks. It was as if our
heritage and every noble thought of our forefathers was rendered foolishness by
the unchallenged edict of 20th Century scholarship swayed by
humanistic atheism and its spawn: political correctness.
20th Century scholars were so completely lost in their
conceit they proposed to re-define reality and so, with words, cause it to bend
to every desire of their imaginations. They sought to replace the meaning of
Jurisprudence with measurements of social science and the vanity of godless
philosophies. You are witness to the consequence of their stealthily emerging
ideas that threatened to destroy the fabric of civilization and cast your
children headlong into the terror of an intolerable anarchy where rule would be
by force alone and justice would be a thing only the most wealthy and
politically favored could afford.
Now we teach Natural Law once more and in time we will cause man-made
laws to conform.
At issue is nothing more or less than The Truth and the Peace and Safety
of future generations.
CONCLUSION
A mighty beam suspends the pans of justice! A razors edge is its
fulcrum! But, the burden of its judgments can only be sustained by a foundation
rooted and grounded in Truth.
Tennyson wrote:
Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.
Many still believe we have no right to speak of Eternal Truth or Natural
Law in public. They claim it violates their code, unwritten edicts of the politically
correct. They wish us to believe the very idea of Eternal Truth or Natural Law
has no place in society, much less in political and jurisprudential
deliberations.
Let us ask them in reply, “Why not?”
Why not seek to discern what Natural Law dictates as a consequence to
our errors?
Why not frame our laws to protect the innocent and warn the impudent?
Why not exercise wisdom and acknowledge that which cannot be denied?
Our most prestigious law schools were founded by legal educators devoted
to promoting public awareness of the eternal principles of right and wrong.
Harvard, Yale, and dozens of others were built and staffed in their early years
by teachers who taught Natural Law.
To those who say Natural Law has no place in our discussions of law we
can reply that our founding fathers were staunch believers who acknowledged self-evident Truth as their guide.
It is time we told those who conceit themselves to be wiser than the
founders of this nation that they shall have no place in our classrooms,
legislatures, or courthouses.
Jurisprudence is being restored!
Though today’s usage is so foreign to its original meaning and so
divested of its lofty purpose and its noble goal as to have become a non
sequitur, we can nonetheless return it to its proper place by insisting that
our leaders recognize Natural Law and re-establish our American Jurisprudence.
Jurisprudence is not just another name for law. It is not just a branch
of social science. It certainly is not an arcane discipline between the
abstrusities of social ethics and that maze men call epistemology. It is the
wisdom of law, and we need it today more than ever.
We can be empowered as a people once again by its value and greatness,
for it was the wise Jurisprudence of our founders that launched this great
nation. The success they hoped for will be ours as we resurrect Jurisprudence
from its holy tomb.
Atheist thinkers selectively defined the term to eliminate its meaning
and replace it with their humanist substitute (social engineering) by which, if
we foolishly allowed it, they would commit heinous crimes against humanity in
their vain effort to evade what cannot be escaped.
Natural Law is an unavoidable part of Reality, and Reality is no
illusion (except to fools).
The ancients venerated words, using them to contemplate deeper truths.
By words they searched for Truth and the destiny ordained by Natural Law,
concerned for the welfare of their children.
We can re-establish Jurisprudence. We can take our nation back from the
“liberated generation” of the 20th Century and refuse to cross the
wide uncharted sea of the future guided only by science and social pressures.
We can heed the wisdom of the past, instead of seeking profit for today at the
expense of tomorrow.
Our founders knew there’d come a time when we’d forget their vision.
Many predicted our refusal to rely on the landmarks of their wise architecture.
Orwell predicted important words would be displaced by newspeak and newthink.
By the year 2050, where will truth
be? Where justice? Where liberty?
As we come together at the dawn of this wonderful millennium we choose
to ensure that liberty, justice, and truth will be secure for our children and
their children, dispelling the darkness that has too long attempted to destroy
us with atheism’s lies.
Jurisprudence has been called the “queen of reason”. Come, let us reason
together!
Let us see that those who ignore the mandates of Natural Law are
unworthy to lead us, for they serve a darkness that denies Eternal Truth. They
are not friends of humanity as they claim. They are, in fact, our enemies!
Jurisprudence, like the torch held high by Lady Liberty in New York’s
harbor, lights our search for Truth. It is the code by which wisdom must codify
our laws. It is not mere law nor a body of laws nor the science or study of
laws. It is wisdom looking toward the future for the welfare of us all. It is
Prudence searching to discern the mandates of Natural Law.
Without Jurisprudence we are barbarians who go to war and criminals who
punish those whose acts offend us, for without Jurisprudence we have no
authority but our own self-serving desires.
We are wiser with a faulty Jurisprudence than with none at all.
The founders of this nation rested on the wisdom of the past, looked
into the future, and labored resolutely with concern for us who are their
posterity.
Now, we will join together to take up their cause and truly follow in
their footsteps.
Only Truth is true.
Only Wisdom is wise.
Let our Wisdom seek to discover Truth once again and in its Freedom
rejoice!
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