Justice & Law Quote by William Blackstone

"THIS law of nature, being co-eval with mankind and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times: no human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all their force, and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this original"

William Blackstone, Judge

About this Quote

Blackstone isn’t merely describing law; he’s staging a coup against it. With the calm certainty of an 18th-century judge, he elevates “the law of nature” into a supreme constitution authored by God, then demotes every parliament and court to a kind of subcontractor. The audacity is wrapped in procedural language: “co-eval with mankind,” “dictated,” “binding,” “validity.” It reads like the voice of institutional moderation, but the subtext is radical hierarchy: legitimacy does not rise from people to government; it descends from God to nature to human law.

The intent is double-edged. On one side, Blackstone offers a reassuring moral ceiling on power: if a regime commands something “contrary” to natural law, it forfeits authority. That idea later becomes a rhetorical weapon for reformers and revolutionaries, because it authorizes disobedience without sounding anarchic. On the other side, he also smuggles in a conservative brake: if law’s authority is derivative, then courts and lawmakers aren’t inventing justice so much as discovering it. That frames social order as something pre-written, not negotiated.

Context matters: Blackstone is writing at a moment when English law is being systematized for an empire and a rising commercial society. His “all countries, and at all times” universality supplies legal confidence for a world that is expanding, unequal, and contested. It’s jurisprudence as theology-adjacent branding: eternal, global, and conveniently beyond ordinary democratic argument.

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William Blackstone

William Blackstone (July 10, 1723 - February 14, 1780) was a Judge from England.

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