In The Social Contract in America: From the Revolution to the Present Order (2007), Mark Hulliung attempts to compare the influence of political theorists Samuel Pufendorf, Hugo Grotius, and John Locke on the republic’s founders, a narrower project than the title of his book suggests. Unfortunately, Hulliung’s aim is off target because American patriots appealed to both radical and conservative ideas and because both reformers and reactionaries invoked his three principal theorists at various times.

Constitutional LawGovernment and PoliticsLaw and LibertyPolitical HistoryPolitical Theory
Other Independent Review articles by Hans Eicholz
Summer 2003 Alexander Hamilton and the Persistence of Myth
Summer 2001 American Compact: James Madison and the Problem of Founding