Justice & Law Quote by William Blackstone

Blackstone is building a constitutional spine out of something older than any constitution: a double authority claim that makes human law feel less like politics and more like physics. As an 18th-century English judge and systematizer of the common law, he’s writing at a moment when Parliament is powerful, the courts are consolidating prestige, and Enlightenment rationality is in the air. His move is to harness that rationality without surrendering to skepticism. “Law of nature” flatters reason; “law of revelation” reassures a Christian public that reason won’t drift into heresy. Together, they offer a belt-and-suspenders legitimacy for the whole legal order.

The specific intent is stabilizing. By stating that “all human laws” depend on these two foundations, Blackstone is not just describing jurisprudence; he’s prescribing the boundary of acceptable legislation. A statute that contradicts natural law or divine law is, in his framework, not merely bad policy but a kind of category error. That elevates judges and jurists into interpreters of higher norms, a quiet assertion of moral review before “judicial review” becomes an American headline term.

The subtext is equally political: anchoring law in transcendent sources protects hierarchy while limiting raw sovereignty. It’s conservative and subtly radical at once. Conservative because it sanctifies existing order as aligned with nature and God; radical because it implies rulers don’t get to legislate reality. Blackstone’s elegance lies in making constraint sound like consensus, turning contested authority into “foundations” no reasonable person should question.