Natural Law, Common Law, and the Problem of Historicism in American Public Life and Education

Recent developments within American politics have witnessed an increase in the use of history to highlight the need for social justice and civic engagement. Yet, on its own, history is an altogether impotent means of doing so, for it fails to provide the public with the moral framework necessary for evaluating past injustices on an objective basis. To remedy this problem, this essay suggests that historians and other scholars and activists who are interested in civic engagement and social justice should look to the classical and common law traditions; the answer to the theoretical need for a solution to problems within presentist activism has, in other words, been the law. Doing so would provide a more universal and shared conception of past injustices and help increase a polity’s moral consciousness. Practically, this strategy can be implemented through a classical or liberal education, with the additional help of state legislatures. In all, this essay argues that history on its own is insufficient for moral education, that the best moral education is offered through the classical model, and that, as a practical matter, it is necessary for a legislative solution to mandate that education, if it will ever be possible to find an objective basis for civic engagement and social justice.