Text 3: the ideas of john locke*

The ideas and writings of the seventeenth-century English philosopher John Locke deeply influenced the political outlook of the American colonists. Locke spelled out his political ideas in Two Treatises on Government, first published in 1690. His writings were widely read and discussed in both Europe and America. Locke's ideas seemed to fit the American colonial experience. Colonial leaders such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison regarded these ideas as political truth. Locke's ideas became so influential that they have been called the "textbook of the American Revolution."

Locke reasoned that all people were born free, equal, and independent. They possessed natural rights to life, liberty, and property at the time when they lived in a state of nature, before governments were formed. People contracted among themselves to form governments to protect their natural rights. Locke argued that if a government failed to protect these natural rights, the people could change that government. The people had not agreed to be governed by tyrants who threatened their rights but by rulers who defended their rights.

Locke's ideas were revolutionary in an age when monarchs still claimed they had God-given absolute powers. Locke denied that people were born with an obligation to obey their rulers. Rather, in his Second Treatise on Civil Government, Locke insisted that freedom of people under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it.

Government, then, was legitimate only as long as people continued to consent to it. Both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, written nearly a century after Locke, reflected Locke's revolutionary ideas.

* John Locke [lok] – Джон Лок

Text 4: the legal heritage of france

Every society has a working system of laws to govern itself and settle disputes among people. Laws gradually change over time to reflect the continual changes in society. Rooted in English law from the time of the colonies, the American legal system also contains elements of Dutch, Spanish, and French law. The office of district attorney may be of Dutch origin. Spanish or Mexican law influenced the legal system in much of the West. French law established a lasting influence in Louisiana.

Louisiana is the only state with a civil law code based on the French Napoleonic Code. All other states use the English common law. Originally French, the Louisiana Territory was ceded to Spain and then returned to France in 1800. Three years later the Louisiana Purchase* brought the Territory into the United States. President Jefferson sought to establish English common law in place of the French and Spanish laws then in effect in Louisiana. The inhabitants of the territory resisted the efforts, and in 1808 the local legislature passed the Digest of Civil Laws that was closely modeled after the Napoleonic Code then in force in France. Most of the written articles of the Code of 1808 were based on French laws, others reflected the territory's Spanish heritage. Revised in 1825 and then again during Reconstruction* *, the Civil Codes of Louisiana remain largely intact today.

Although one legal scholar in Louisiana described the codes as "The most precious heritage we have received from our ancestors," some people believe the Civil Code should be revised and updated. Although this call for revision may ultimately be met, the long traditional heritage of French law in Louisiana will continue in whatever new civil codes that are adopted.

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* Louisiana Purchase — Луизианская Сделка

** Reconstruction — амер. ист. Реконструкция Юга после гражданской войны