UC Santa Cruz · Spring 2015
The Trajectory of Justice: natural law and the Constitution
Danny Sheehan’s spring 2015 UC Santa Cruz course on natural law, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and how they can answer the rise of what he calls the secret government.
Over the quarter Danny traces the natural law roots of the Constitution, from the Scottish Enlightenment to the debates between Madison and Hamilton, then works through the First, Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. He connects them to post-9/11 laws such as the Authorization for Use of Military Force and the Patriot Act, and to the challenge of climate change.
Excerpts from his manuscript Paradigm Politics are below.
Lectures
- Course overview (March 31, 2015)
- The challenges of the coming century (April 2, 2015)
- Media distraction versus the real problems we face (April 7, 2015)
- Reconciling the Constitution, natural law and spirituality (April 9, 2015)
- A context for natural law (April 14, 2015)
- Worldviews and modes of ethical reasoning (April 16, 2015)
- The Bill of Rights and natural law (April 21, 2015)
- Madison versus Hamilton (April 23, 2015)
- The Bill of Rights and worldviews (April 28, 2015)
- The First Amendment: free speech (April 30, 2015)
- The Fourth Amendment: search and seizure (May 5, 2015)
- The Fourth and Fifth Amendments (May 7, 2015)
- The Fourteenth Amendment: due process (May 12, 2015)
- The Fourteenth Amendment: equal protection (May 14, 2015)
- Current events and the players in today’s crises (May 19, 2015)
- Building a meaningful thesis (May 21, 2015)
- Outlining the final thesis (May 26, 2015)
- The shadow government, part 1 (May 28, 2015)
- The shadow government, part 2 (May 28, 2015)
- Confronting 21st-century problems (June 2, 2015)
- Twelve steps to confronting a global crisis (June 4, 2015)