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

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

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0844750905 ISBN 13: 9780844750903

Publisher: AEI Press, 2026

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 this title

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.

Edition details

• Publisher: AEI Press
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0844750905
• ISBN 13: 9780844750903
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 120
• Editor: Levin Yuval, White Adam J, Yoo John