Cultivating the “higher law” in American jurisprudence: John Quincy Adams, neo‐classical rhetoric, and the Amistad case

Abstract

Working from the assumption that John Quincy Adams brought to his address in United States v. Amistad (1841) the precepts of rhetoric he had taught at Harvard, this essay offers a reading of the speech that is grounded in neo‐classical rhetoric and informed by our current understanding of rhetoric's constitutive function. The reading reveals that Adams used the precepts of neo‐classical rhetoric to cultivate a “higher law” in American jurisprudence and, in so doing, sketched a rhetoric of American law.