id	author	title	date	pages	extension	mime	words	sentence	flesch	summary	cache	txt
expositions-1778	none	Cicero and America	2014	23	.pdf	application/pdf	11207	554	62	In other words, not only does the book treat the idea of natural law in its theoretical dimension, it is meant to show the fundamental connection of that idea to moral virtue, and thereby to illustrate Cicero’s belief in the unbreakable link between political theory and political practice. Otis was convinced that his brethren across the ocean would eventually see the error of their ways, and so counseled obedience in what he believed would prove to be the interim.36 Eventually, of course, as it became clear there would be no admission of wrongdoing and the situation only continued to deteriorate, obedience to a higher law would trump obedience to the so-called British constitution or British civil law, and the result was the Declaration of Independence.37 It is here that the natural law makes its most obvious, but also most important, appearance: the Declaration’s argument relies explicitly on “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” as its guiding principle.38 Edward Corwin, in his indispensable little book The “Higher Law” Background of American Constitutional Law (1955), shows that the notion of natural law or a higher law, while it may have entered the American political tradition most directly or explicitly through the writings of John Locke, has deep and important roots in the writings of Cicero.	cache/expositions-1778.pdf	txt/expositions-1778.txt