Beschreibung
It is well known that the modern West is a normative project that includes human rights, the rule of law, separation of powers, popular sovereignty, and representative democracy. What is less well known is that this began with Christian Natural Law, which allowed for a ‘public law’ to emerge alongside the ‘private law’ of Roman law of the Western Church. Indeed, Canon law was the first modern Western legal system of public law.
The West’s legal tradition is rooted in philosophical rationalism. But this secular philosophy of reason did not fall from the sky; rather, it has its roots in natural law, as shown by Immanuel Kant, Max Weber and Jürgen Habermas. In the 18th century, the concept of natural rights (or human rights) that emerged from natural law provided legitimacy for the revolutions of the Enlightenment in the United States and France.