Moral legislation in early American state constitutions and legislation

Early American state constitutions and legislation provide significant insight into the political thought of the state leaders of the founding period. Unlike the private political writings of individuals from the period, the constitutions and legislation represent a consensus of political thought put into practice through the drafting of authoritative documents. Contemporary scholars argue about the primacy of at least the following three perspectives in early American political thought---popular sovereignty, natural law/rights doctrine, and Christian theology. Contemporary scholarship has largely concluded that popular sovereignty, understood by leading state constitutional scholars as the arbitrary will of the people, emerges from the constitutional tradition as the dominant perspective of state founders.;Passages in early state constitutions and legislation addressing the nature of God and human nature portray a view of popular sovereignty that is derived from and limited by natural law/rights doctrine and Christian theological principles. The constitutional evidence, therefore, anticipates the creation of moral legislation that reflects popular sovereignty only when the people's will is consistent with natural law/rights and Christian theological principles. The fixed principles of natural law and Christian revelation provide limits within which citizens' behavior is deemed acceptable and outside of which behavior is wrong, regardless of whether a fellow citizen is affected by the behavior. Therefore, laws regulating behavior that does not threaten the life, liberty or property of other citizens are particularly useful in discerning the perspective of legislators. Three of the state constitutions in the founding-era provide a straightforward directive to their legislatures to create moral legislation in accordance with the fixed principles of natural law/rights and theological principles. While the remaining constitutions are less clear in their mandate to legislators, both the former and latter states' legislatures enact moral legislation by and large reflecting a fundamental commitment to fixed principles of natural law/rights and Christian theology. The founding-era state constitutional and legislative traditions provide evidence that the early American state founders political thought is fundamentally grounded on fixed principles of reason and revelation rather than on an arbitrary will of the people.