The Human Nature of Freedom and Identity - We Hold More than Random Thoughts

Abstract

Kmiec demonstrates that natural law is an indispensable aid to proper constitutional interpretation. The article explores the founding conceptions of liberty and its interrelationship with human nature and addresses how the Constitution reflects these aspects of human nature. Kmiec evaluates writings of the founding fathers and their contemporaries and influences to show how the Constitution is designed to promote human nature's more noble aspects, such as morality, and temper some of its more base aspects, such as impulsiveness. The article concludes by offering some perspectives on aspects of human nature understated in the constitutional design and what ought to be done when there are disputing conceptions of human nature.

Keywords: constitutional interpretation, natural law, human nature

JEL Classification: K19