The COMMON Law Begins. . .
with a realistic understanding of human nature. It accepts people as they are — beings with reason, spirit, and sense. At its core stands the figure of the “reasonable person”, one who acts and judges according to reason. From this view arises a central truth: freedom is grounded in reason itself. Because each human being is rational, each is, by nature, free.
Through the centuries, the Common Law built a social order founded on human dignity and the moral and intellectual independence of every member of the community. To be free is to be responsible — to exercise self-control, to answer for one’s actions, to care for one’s family, to manage one’s own property and affairs. Society, in this conception, is a fellowship of free and lawful men and women, living together in mutual respect and responsibility.
The Common Law does not begin with the belief that human nature is corrupt or depraved. Systems built on that assumption, like democracy’s, depend on coercion to enforce virtue. The Common Law, by contrast, rests on confidence in human capacity — belief that the people can govern themselves and act justly. Its principles and institutions therefore point toward personal responsibility and constitutional freedom.
Across the ages, this faith in human dignity transformed the servant, the laborer, and even the villain into the freeholder and the independent citizen — a remarkable achievement of moral imagination. The moral ideals are simple but profound: honest work, fair wages, a just price, a reasonable profit. To sell shoddy goods is wrong; to charge an excessive price is extortion. The standards of right and wrong in daily life were understood by all in the community.
Today, however, that older ideal of the independent, self-reliant person has giving way to a new type — “the Statutory Man”. Surrounded by a maze of regulations, he may seem safer and better protected from misfortune. Yet his initiative, energy, and sense of responsibility are diminished. He becomes, in a sense, incomplete — dependent on external authority for direction and judgment.
The struggle for the future may well be between these two visions of humanity: the “statutory man” creature of regulation and the reasonable person of the Common Law — the free and lawful individual.