Natural Rights, the Common Good, and the American Revolution (America at 250)

Rogers Brown, Janice; Burns, Daniel E.; George, Robert P.; Kessler, Charles R.; Zuckert, Michael

ISBN 10: 0844750913 / ISBN 13: 9780844750910

Published by AEI Press, 2025

About this Item

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Natural Rights, the Common Good, and the American Revolution (America at 250)
• Publisher: AEI Press
• Publication Date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0844750913
• ISBN 13: 9780844750910
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of American independence, yet the founding is controversial now in ways it has not been in decades. 

The American Enterprise Institute offers a major intellectual and educational project to reintroduce Americans to the unique value of their national inheritance. In the fourth volume of this series, legal scholars and political scientists examine the many ways in which the founding generation understood the “unalienable rights” immortalized by the Declaration of Independence.

Although the Declaration described the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as a “self-evident” truth, this characterization belied the Revolutionary era’s complex discourse on the origins of political rights and their role in sustaining a political community.

Delving into these debates reveals how the American Revolution encoded a productive tension between individual rights and communal responsibilities at the nation’s founding.

About the Authors

Janice Rogers Brown is a lecturer and senior fellow at the public law and policy program at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. She was a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit and on the California Supreme Court.

Daniel E. Burns is an associate professor of politics at the University of Dallas and a visiting fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas at Austin.

Robert P. George is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University.

Charles R. Kessler is the Dengler-Dykema Distinguished Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College and the editor of the Claremont Review of Books.

Michael Zuckert is the Nancy Reeves Dreux Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame and clinical professor at Arizona State University.