Common Law and Natural Law in America

Andrew Forsyth is Lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies, and Assistant Secretary in the Office of the Secretary and Vice President for Student Life, at Yale University, Connecticut. A Cambridge law graduate, he studied theology and religious studies at the University of Glasgow, Harvard University, and Yale University. He has recently published articles in the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal, and Scottish Journal of Theology.

• 1. Puritan natural law: early New England and the colonial colleges; 2. Modern natural law: revolutionaries and republicans; 3. Organizing common law: William Blackstone in America; 4. subsuming natural law into common law: Joseph Story; 5. Law as science: Christopher Columbus Langdell; 6. Breaking with natural law: Oliver Wendell Holmes and the legal realists; Epilogue; Index.

'Forsyth explodes the myth that the complex and sometimes contradictory insights of natural law had nothing to do with the development of the American legal tradition. Elegantly written and meticulously documented, this book is essential reading for both ethicists and legal historians.' Cathleen Kaveny, Darald and Juliet Libby Professor of Law and Theology, Boston College