An Introduction to the Study of the legal Ideas of the Levellers at the Time of Puritan Revolution
1969 Volume 1969 Issue 19 Pages 111-128,v
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1969 Volume 1969 Issue 19 Pages 111-128,v
S. B. Chrimes said that " the seventeenth century is the Heroic age in English constitutional History."
If this is true, we must take notice of the importance of the legal theories in the controveries upon the constitutional issues at the time, when we make a detailed study of the legal and political thoughts in England.
This article, from the point of view that a legal thought is sharped up on the basis of the interdependance betweeen the legal idea and the legal system, deals with the law-reform-movement of the Levellers during the period from 1647 to 1649 and clarifies the significance of the theories among them, particulary that of W. Walwyn who was the most original rationalist of all their leaders.
The author argues how the idea of the fundamental human rights originating from the ethical rule of the separatists was embodied in the legal principle called " The Agreement of the People, " the first written constitutional draft founded on the democratic social contract theory of the Levellers. But the draft failed to be a formal constitution, because it was inconsistent with the spirits or the age.
The author, explicating the process of the formation of the draft and its abandonment, concludes that the social contract theory based on the natural right was too idealistic to be a principle giving rise to a new legal system, although it had destroyed the old order.
