[neverdem]

Video is at the source. His speech is pretty good so far, at least 10 minutes so far.

[muawiyah]

A little correction on the 3/5 compromose ~ there'd already been a compromise regarding New England. In the Treaty of Paris each unit of the Colony of New England was treated as an independent nation, so you ended up with Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont and New Hampshire ~ rather than just "New England".

This disparate treatment had to be balanced in the new Constitution of 1790 in some manner to give the Southern States (and Virginia, which was then the most populous state) MORE votes in Congress.

New England then would end up the heavyweight in the Senate, and the South would end up the heavyweight in the House if slaves were counted.

In brief, slaves became ciphers for the purpose of reaching a compromise in relative power in Congress. If there'd been no need to rectify the error of the Treaty of Paris they wouldn't have needed to have been counted at all!

[Notwithstanding]

Ave Maria School of Law was founded in 2000 to re-invigorate and re-introduce natural law principles into the practice of law.

Do you know of any other schools that are similarly committed to doing so?

[eclecticEel]

The problem being that natural law isn’t written down anywhere, while positive law is. If my understanding of human nature is anywhere near correct; the sanction of ‘natural law’ amounts to no more than an infinite pretext for a judge to apply all his personal prejudices without even the subterfuge of restraint.

[IYAS9YAS]

placemark.

[cookcounty]

"Had the framers and their successors adhered to these beliefs for all persons, there could have been no slavery, no Jim Crow, no public segregation, and none of the evils they spawned."

This sort of implies that the framers started with a clean slate,which they absolutely did not. The inherited corruption of slavery was very well established long before the Declaration and the Constitution, and indeed, was already beginning to wane, albeit slowly, at the time of the Constitution. If anything, the Constitution hastened the end of slavery.

While it is true that the British ended slavery in 1833, their economic system was not nearly as tied into slavery as was the case in the American South, making the transition relatively easier. Had we remained in the original Confederation and NOT adopted the Constitution, I have no doubt that slavery would have continued into the early 1900's.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

Napolitano: "Natural law teaches that our rights come from our humanity. Since we are created by God in His image and likeness, and since He is perfectly free—or, if you prefer, since we are creatures of nature born biologically dependent but morally free—freedom is our birthright. Liberty comes from our humanity, not from an outside source such as the government."

They no longer teach this in schools. They do not teach students how to distinguish between positivism and natural law or the basis of human rights in the Constitution.

[TheThinker]

From what I understand, tolerating slavery in the South at the time of the Constitution Convention was necessary for ratification and so the birth of America.