To: KM who wrote (35855 ) 7/20/2005 12:34:20 PM From: redfish Respond to of 306849 I would put her in the nutcase category ... "Natural law is not a prescriptive way to solve problems," Jones said. "It is a way to look at life starting with the Ten Commandments." "The integrity of law, its religious roots, its transcendent quality are disappearing. I saw the movie 'Chicago' with Richard Gere the other day. That's the way the public thinks about lawyers," she told the students. "The first 100 years of American lawyers were trained on Blackstone, who wrote that: 'The law of nature . dictated by God himself . is binding . in all counties and at all times; no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all force and all their authority . from this original.' The Framers created a government of limited power with this understanding of the rule of law - that it was dependent on transcendent religious obligation," said Jones. She said that the business about all of the Founding Fathers being deists is "just wrong," or "way overblown." She says they believed in "faith and reason," and this did not lead to intolerance. "This is not a prescription for intolerance or narrow sectarianism," she continued, "for unalienable rights were given by God to all our fellow citizens. Having lost sight of the moral and religious foundations of the rule of law, we are vulnerable to the destruction of our freedom, our equality before the law and our self-respect. It is my fervent hope that this new century will experience a revival of the original understanding of the rule of law and its roots. "The answer is a recovery of moral principle, the sine qua non of an orderly society. Post 9/11, many events have been clarified. It is hard to remain a moral relativist when your own people are being killed."