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• Literature of Liberty a Review of Contemporary Liberal Thought
• Editorial Staff
• Associate Editors
• Editorial
• Bibliographical Essay: Henry B. Veatch, Natural Law: Dead Or Alive?
• I: Natural Law
• “nature” and “law” In Natural Law
• The Anatomy of Natural Rights
• Egoism and Rights
• The Is/ought Chimera
• Deriving “ought” From “is”
• Facts Vs. Value-laden Whims
• Is/ought and Probable Reasons
• Does Righteous Anger Imply Rights?
• Why Be Moral?
• Truth As an Objective Value
• Was the Revolution Objectively Necessary?
• Natural Law and State of Nature
• Natural Law and the State
• Natural Rights and Anarchism
• Dworkin On Rights
• Liberalism, Rights, and Abortion
• Rights and “mercy Killing”
• Rights and the “brain Drain”
• The Natural Law Right to Work
• Grotius: Contract and Natural Law
• Rights and Communication
• II: Autonomy, Privacy, and Authority
• Bureaucracy and “the Organization Man”
• Autonomy and Anarchism
• Autonomy and Taking Responsibility
• Autonomy, Motivation, and “buck-passing”
• Schooling For Conformity
• The Schoolroom Vs. Autonomy
• Obedience to Authority
• The Meaning of Privacy
• Privacy and Autonomy
• Privacy and Consent
• The Court and Privacy
• III: The Ambiguities of Liberty
• Clarifying Freedom
• Rehabilitating Mill's “harm Principle”
• Experiencing Freedom
• Do Offers Coerce Freedom?
• The Danger of “dangerousness”
• Freedom, Motivation, and Government Programs
• Freedom Vs. Determinism
• Negative Vs. Positive Freedom
• Smith and Utilitarian Economic Freedom
• Locke, Freedom, and Tacit Consent
• Religious Freedom
• Freedom, Existentialism, and Innocent Victims
• Does Censorship Harm Freedom?
• IV: Slavery
• Slavery, Ideology, and Subordination
• Slavery and Imperialist Ideology
• Enlightenment Liberalism Vs. Slavery
• The Anatomy of a Slave Revolt
• Colonial American Slave Law
• Jefferson On Slavery
• Slavery and the Poor
• V: Planning
• Regulation and the Warfare State
• Mail, Privacy, and Social Control
• Corporate State Capitalism: Coal
• French War “planification”: Chlorates
• Bureaucracy and British Regulation
• British Foreign Policy and Stagnation
• Political Decisions and the Economy
• Government, Labor, and Multinationals
• Black Markets Vs. Regulation
• Regulation Vs. Academic Autonomy
• Government Schools and Social Control
• The Economics of Charity
• International State Planning and Inflation
• Competition and Individual Knowledge

The Natural Law Right to Work

Thomas Haggard

• University of South Carolina

“The Right to Work—A Constitutional and Natural Law Perspective.” The Journal of Social and Political Affairs 1 (July 1976): 215–243.

The natural law approach can illuminate the legal status of work in a free society. The conclusions reached are: (1) A natural-law right to work does exist. (2) The United States Constitution was designed to protect natural-law rights, including the right to work. (3) Currently, the natural right to work suffers from fallacious consitutional interpretation. The right to work is treated as the right to engage in voluntary work (i.e., no one should prevent one's working nor ought anyone be forced to employ another).

The natural law defines an ethical system that deduces its norms of human conduct from the nature of man. Under natural law, the good for man is to seek his perfection by living his life consistent with his natural essence. Deducing natural-law rights from man's essential attributes, we focus on man's life, action, rationality, free will, autonomy, sociability, individuality, and metaphysical equality.

Two necessary corollaries of man's essential attributes are his self-ownership and his right to freedom from aggression. The natural right of self-ownership entitles us to do anything we choose except violate another person's right of self-ownership through aggression. Aggressive acts include the unjustified use of force or fraud against another's person or legitimate property. Natural law considers when it is permissible for individuals to resort to force. In effect, to claim a natural-law right to do something is to assert that we are morally entitled to use force against anyone who would interfere with our freedom to do that very thing.

Work, within a natural law context, is a natural right almost by definition. Work means those actions we perform to maximize our existence as humans. Since everyone has the natural right to perfect his own natural essence, it follows that work is a natural right. Work includes using previously owned resources, exchanging such justly acquired resources or property, and exchanging one's services in an employment relationship.

The American Constitution, influenced by such natural rights philosophers as John Locke, guaranteed such freedoms through the Bill of Rights which protects property and the right to labor in the above defined sense. However, legal protection of the natural-law right to work has been violated repeatedly in America through occupational registration, job licensure, state regulation of employment contracts, state and federal labor laws, and prohibitions of contracts in which employers forbid employees from joining unions. The root of these violations of a natural-law right to work is the fallacy behind government police powers that aggress against individual rights in the name of the common good.