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Brooke Acevedo
BL-495: Expl. Legal Concepts Overseas
6 May 2019
John Locke and the US Constitution
The American revolutionary generation got many of its ideas from the English
philosopher John Locke. John Locke was born in 1632 and died in 1704. He was known as the
founder of modern “liberal” thought, Locke pioneered the ideas of natural law, social contract,
religious toleration, and the right to a revolution that are now essential parts of both the
American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution that followed.
Locke was born in Wrington, England, he was trained as a physician. Shortly after he
became an influential political theorist closely associated with the Whig party of England. The
Whigs were a political group and then a political party in the parliaments of England, Scotland,
Great Britain, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. The Whigs had a strong position in English
politics until the 1850s when they adopted the term liberal. In the American colonies, the Whigs
were the people who were against British control, favored their independence from Britain, and
supported the Revolutionary War.
John Locke wrote several revolutionary political works, including Some Thoughts
Concerning Education, A Letter Concerning Toleration, and An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding. Locke’s most profound and influential writings were his First and Second
Treatise of Civil Government (1689). These Treatises were written to defend the Glorious
Revolution that happened in 1688. In the Second Treatise, Locke explained that the nature of
men and women was to be free to pursue and defend their own interests, this statement started a
brutal war. To end this war, people made their own government to secure that they would have
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peace. Locke also noted that there could be “no freedom” without a Social Compact of laws,
because “liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others; which cannot be where
there is no law.”
Locke shared several views in common with several prominent philosophers, including
Thomas Hobbes. Similar to Hobbes, Locke Hobbes, Locke believed humans to be inherently
selfish. Hobbes believed people to be incapable of self-governance in the absences of a central
leading figure to provide guidance and support, Locke argued that ordinary humans have a large
capacity to make reasonable and rational decisions. Locke asserted that people, as rational and
emotional people, have natural rights. Locke believed, have rights to life, liberty, and property
that governments should not deny. Locke asserted that regular people have the right to overthrow
established governments if their basic natural rights do not receive protection. Locke proposed in
