Natural Law

7/11/2017 Natural law - Wikiwand
EN
Natural law
Connected to:
Society Positive law Human nature
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Natural_law 1/24
Thomas Aquinas, a Catholic philosopher of the Middle Ages, revived and developed natural law from ancient
Greek philosophy.
Natural law (Latin: ius naturale, lex naturalis) is a philosophy asserting that certain rights are inherent by virtue
of human nature endowed by nature; traditionally God or a transcendent source, and can be understood
universally through human reason. As determined by nature, the law of nature is implied to be universal,[1]
existing independently of the positive law of a given political order, society or nation-state.
Historically, natural law refers to the use of reason to analyze human nature to deduce binding rules of moral
behavior from nature's or God's creation of reality and mankind. The concept of natural law first appeared in
ancient Greek philosophy including Aristotle,[2] and was referred to by Roman philosopher Cicero. It was
subsequently alluded to in the Bible, and was then developed in the Middle Ages by Catholic philosophers such
as Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas. During the Age of Enlightenment, modern natural law theories were
further developed, combining inspiration from the Roman law, and alongside philosophies like social contract
theory. It featured greatly in the works of Alberico Gentili, Francisco Surez, Richard Hooker, Thomas Hobbes,
Hugo Grotius, Samuel von Pufendorf, Matthew Hale, John Locke, Francis Hutcheson, Jean Jacques Burlamaqui,
Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emmerich de Vattel, Cesare Beccaria and Francesco Mario Pagano. It was used to
challenge the divine right of kings, and became an alternative justification for the establishment of a social
contract, positive law, and government and thus legal rights in the form of classical republicanism.
Conversely, the concept of natural rights is used by others to challenge the legitimacy of all such establishments.
Contemporarily, the concept of natural law is closely related to the concept of natural rights. Indeed, many
philosophers, jurists and scholars use natural law synonymously with natural rights (Latin: ius naturale), or
natural justice.[3] while others distinguish between natural law and natural right.[1]
Declarationism, a legal philosophy that is considered to violate the Supremacy Clause and the Anti-
Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution, argues that the founding of the United States is based on
natural law. Because of the intersection between natural law and natural rights, natural law has been cited as a
component in the United States Declaration of Independence, and claimed by natural law proponents thus to be
incorporated into its constitution, as well as in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
(1789). (See: "Laws of Nature" First Paragraph Declaration of Independence[4])
Although natural law is often confused with common law, the two are distinct. Even though natural law theories
have exercised a profound influence on the development of English common law,[5] the latter is not based on
inherent rights, but is the legal tradition whereby certain rights or values are legally recognized by virtue of
already having judicial recognition or articulation.[6] Natural law is often contrasted with the human-made laws
(positive law) of a given state, political entity or society.[7] In legal theory, the interpretation of a human-made
law requires some reference to natural law. On this understanding of natural law, natural law can be invoked to
criticize judicial decisions about what the law says, but not to criticize the best interpretation of the law itself.
History
The use of natural law, in its various incarnations, has varied widely throughout history. There are a number of
theories of natural law, that differ from each other with respect to the role that morality plays in determining the
authority of legal norms. This article deals with its usages separately rather than attempt to unify them into a
single theory.
Plato
This section possibly contains original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding
inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. (May 2011) (Learn how and
when to remove this template message)
Although Plato did not have an explicit theory of natural law (he rarely used the phrase 'natural law' except in
Gorgias 484 and Timaeus 83e), his concept of nature, according to John Wild, contains some of the elements
found in many natural law theories.[8] According to Plato, we live in an orderly universe.[9] The basis of this
orderly universe or nature are the forms, most fundamentally the Form of the Good, which Plato describes as
"the brightest region of Being".[10] The Form of the Good is the cause of all things, and when it is seen it leads a
person to act wisely.[11] In the Symposium, the Good is closely identified with the Beautiful.[12] In the
Symposium, Plato describes how the experience of the Beautiful by Socrates enabled him to resist the
temptations of wealth and sex.[13] In the Republic, the ideal community is, "...a city which would be established
in accordance with nature."[14]
Aristotle
See also: Treatise on Law
Plato (left) and Aristotle (right), a detail of The School of Athens, a fresco by Raphael.
Greek philosophy emphasized the distinction between "nature" (physis, ) on the one hand and "law",
"custom", or "convention" (nomos, ) on the other. What the law commanded would be expected to vary
from place to place, but what was "by nature" should be the same everywhere. A "law of nature" would
therefore have the flavor more of a paradox than something that obviously existed.[1] Against the
conventionalism that the distinction between nature and custom could engender, Socrates and his philosophic
heirs, Plato and Aristotle, posited the existence of natural justice or natural right (dikaion physikon,
, Latin ius naturale). Of these, Aristotle is often said to be the father of natural law.[3]
Aristotle's association with natural law may be due to the interpretation given to his works by Thomas Aquinas.
[15] But whether Aquinas correctly read Aristotle is in dispute. According to some, Aquinas conflates natural
law and natural right, the latter of which Aristotle posits in Book V of the Nicomachean Ethics (Book IV of the
Eudemian Ethics). According to this interpretation, Aquinas's influence was such as to affect a number of early
translations of these passages in an unfortunate manner, though more recent translations render those more
literally.[16] Aristotle notes that natural justice is a species of political justice, specifically the scheme of
distributive and corrective justice that would be established under the best political community; were this to take
the form of law, this could be called a natural law, though Aristotle does not discuss this and suggests in the
Politics that the best regime may not rule by law at all.[17]
The best evidence of Aristotle's having thought there was a natural law comes from the Rhetoric, where
Aristotle notes that, aside from the "particular" laws that each people has set up for itself, there is a "common"
law that is according to nature.[18] Specifically, he quotes Sophocles and Empedocles:
Universal law is the law of Nature. For there really is, as every one to some extent divines, a natural
justice and injustice that is binding on all men, even on those who have no association or covenant
with each other. It is this that Sophocles' Antigone clearly means when she says that the burial of
Polyneices was a just act in spite of the prohibition: she means that it was just by nature:
"Not of to-day or yesterday it is,

But lives eternal: none can date its birth."
And so Empedocles, when he bids us kill no living creature, he is saying that to do this is not just
for some people, while unjust for others:
"Nay, but, an all-embracing law, through the realms of the sky

Unbroken it stretcheth, and over the earth's immensity."[19]
Some critics believe that the context of this remark suggests only that Aristotle advised that it could be
rhetorically advantageous to appeal to such a law, especially when the "particular" law of one's own city was
averse to the case being made, not that there actually was such a law;[3] Moreover, they claim that Aristotle
considered two of the three candidates for a universally valid, natural law provided in this passage to be wrong.
[1] Aristotle's paternity of natural law tradition is consequently disputed.
Stoic natural law

The development of this tradition of natural justice into one of natural law is usually attributed to the Stoics. The
rise of natural law as a universal system coincided with the rise of large empires and kingdoms in the Greek
world.[20][full citation needed] Whereas the "higher" law that Aristotle suggested one could appeal to was
emphatically natural, in contradistinction to being the result of divine positive legislation, the Stoic natural law
was indifferent to either the natural or divine source of the law: the Stoics asserted the existence of a rational and
purposeful order to the universe (a divine or eternal law), and the means by which a rational being lived in
accordance with this order was the natural law, which inspired actions that accorded with virtue.[1]
As the English historian A. J. Carlyle (18611943) notes:
There is no change in political theory so startling in its completeness as the change from the theory
of Aristotle to the later philosophical view represented by Cicero and Seneca.... We think that this
cannot be better exemplified than with regard to the theory of the equality of human nature."[21]
Charles H. McIlwain likewise observes that "the idea of the equality of men is the profoundest
contribution of the Stoics to political thought" and that "its greatest influence is in the changed
conception of law that in part resulted from it.[22]
Natural law first appeared among the stoics who believed that God is everywhere and in everyone. Within
humans is a "divine spark" which helps them to live in accordance with nature. The stoics felt that there was a
way in which the universe had been designed and natural law helped us to harmonise with this.
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Cicero wrote in his De Legibus that both justice and law originate from what nature has given to man, from what
the human mind embraces, from the function of man, and from what serves to unite humanity.[23] For Cicero,
natural law obliges us to contribute to the general good of the larger society.[24] The purpose of positive laws is
to provide for "the safety of citizens, the preservation of states, and the tranquility and happiness of human life."
In this view, "wicked and unjust statutes" are "anything but 'laws,'" because "in the very definition of the term
'law' there inheres the idea and principle of choosing what is just and true."[25] Law, for Cicero, "ought to be a
reformer of vice and an incentive to virtue."[26] Cicero expressed the view that "the virtues which we ought to
cultivate, always tend to our own happiness, and that the best means of promoting them consists in living with
men in that perfect union and charity which are cemented by mutual benefits."[24]
Cicero influenced the discussion of natural law for many centuries to come, up through the era of the American
Revolution. The jurisprudence of the Roman Empire was rooted in Cicero, who held "an extraordinary grip ...
upon the imagination of posterity" as "the medium for the propagation of those ideas which informed the law
and institutions of the empire."[27] Cicero's conception of natural law "found its way to later centuries notably
through the writings of Saint Isidore of Seville and the Decretum of Gratian."[28] Thomas Aquinas, in his
summary of medieval natural law, quoted Cicero's statement that "nature" and "custom" were the sources of a
society's laws.[29]
The Renaissance Italian historian Leonardo Bruni praised Cicero as the man "who carried philosophy from
Greece to Italy, and nourished it with the golden river of his eloquence."[30] The legal culture of Elizabethan
England, exemplified by Sir Edward Coke, was "steeped in Ciceronian rhetoric."[31] The Scottish moral
philosopher Francis Hutcheson, as a student at Glasgow, "was attracted most by Cicero, for whom he always
professed the greatest admiration."[32] More generally in eighteenth-century Great Britain, Cicero's name was a
household word among educated people.[32] Likewise, "in the admiration of early Americans Cicero took pride
of place as orator, political theorist, stylist, and moralist."[33]
The British polemicist Thomas Gordon "incorporated Cicero into the radical ideological tradition that travelled
from the mother country to the colonies in the course of the eighteenth century and decisively shaped early
American political culture."[34] Cicero's description of the immutable, eternal, and universal natural law was
quoted by Burlamaqui[35] and later by the American revolutionary legal scholar James Wilson.[36] Cicero
became John Adams's "foremost model of public service, republican virtue, and forensic eloquence."[37] Adams
wrote of Cicero that "as all the ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher united
in the same character, his authority should have great weight."[38] Thomas Jefferson "first encountered Cicero as
a schoolboy while learning Latin, and continued to read his letters and discourses throughout his life. He
admired him as a patriot, valued his opinions as a moral philosopher, and there is little doubt that he looked upon
Cicero's life, with his love of study and aristocratic country life, as a model for his own."[39] Jefferson described
Cicero as "the father of eloquence and philosophy."[40]
Christianity
Those who see biblical support for the doctrine of natural law often point to Paul's Epistle to the Romans: "For
when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the
law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also
bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another. (Romans 2:1415).
The intellectual historian A. J. Carlyle has commented on this passage, "There can be little doubt that St Paul's
words imply some conception analogous to the 'natural law' in Cicero, a law written in men's hearts, recognized
by man's reason, a law distinct from the positive law of any State, or from what St Paul recognized as the
revealed law of God. It is in this sense that St Paul's words are taken by the Fathers of the fourth and fifth
centuries like St Hilary of Poitiers, St Ambrose, and St Augustine, and there seems no reason to doubt the
correctness of their interpretation."[41]
Some early Church Fathers, especially those in the West, sought to incorporate natural law into Christianity. The
most notable among these was Augustine of Hippo, who equated natural law with man's prelapsarian state; as
such, a life according to nature was no longer possible and men needed instead to seek salvation through the
divine law and grace of Jesus Christ.
In the twelfth century, Gratian equated the natural law with divine law. Albertus Magnus would address the
subject a century later, and his pupil St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica I-II qq. 90106, restored
Natural Law to its independent state, asserting natural law as the rational creature's participation in the eternal
law.[42] Yet, since human reason could not fully comprehend the Eternal law, it needed to be supplemented by
revealed Divine law. (See also Biblical law in Christianity.) Meanwhile, Aquinas taught that all human or
positive laws were to be judged by their conformity to the natural law. An unjust law is not a law, in the full
sense of the word. It retains merely the 'appearance' of law insofar as it is duly constituted and enforced in the
same way a just law is, but is itself a 'perversion of law.'[43] At this point, the natural law was not only used to
pass judgment on the moral worth of various laws, but also to determine what those laws meant in the first
place. This principle laid the seed for possible societal tension with reference to tyrants.[44]
The natural law was inherently teleological and deontological in that although it is aimed at goodness, it is
entirely focused on the ethicalness of actions, rather than their consequence. The specific content of the natural
law was therefore determined by a conception of what things constituted happiness, be they temporal
satisfaction or salvation. The state, in being bound by the natural law, was conceived as an institution whose
purpose was to bring its subjects to true happiness.
In the 16th century, the School of Salamanca (Francisco Surez, Francisco de Vitoria, etc.) further developed a
philosophy of natural law.
After the Protestant Reformation, some Protestant denominations maintained parts of the Catholic concept of
natural law. The English theologian Richard Hooker from the Church of England adapted Thomistic notions of
natural law to Anglicanism five principles: to live, to learn, to reproduce, to worship God, and to live in an
ordered society.[45]
English jurisprudence
Heinrich A. Rommen remarked upon "the tenacity with which the spirit of the English common law retained the
conceptions of natural law and equity which it had assimilated during the Catholic Middle Ages, thanks
especially to the influence of Henry de Bracton (d. 1268) and Sir John Fortescue (d. cir. 1476)."[46] Bracton's
translator notes that Bracton "was a trained jurist with the principles and distinctions of Roman jurisprudence
firmly in mind"; but Bracton adapted such principles to English purposes rather than copying slavishly.[47] In
particular, Bracton turned the imperial Roman maxim that "the will of the prince is law" on its head, insisting
that the king is under the law.[48] The legal historian Charles F. Mullett has noted Bracton's "ethical definition of
law, his recognition of justice, and finally his devotion to natural rights."[49] Bracton considered justice to be the
"fountain-head" from which "all rights arise."[50] For his definition of justice, Bracton quoted the twelfth-
century Italian jurist Azo: "'Justice is the constant and unfailing will to give to each his right.'"[51] Bracton's
work was the second legal treatise studied by the young apprentice lawyer Thomas Jefferson.[52]
Fortescue stressed "the supreme importance of the law of God and of nature" in works that "profoundly
influenced the course of legal development in the following centuries."[53] The legal scholar Ellis Sandoz has
noted that "the historically ancient and the ontologically higher laweternal, divine, naturalare woven
together to compose a single harmonious texture in Fortescue's account of English law."[54] As the legal
historian Norman Doe explains: "Fortescue follows the general pattern set by Aquinas. The objective of every
legislator is to dispose people to virtue. It is by means of law that this is accomplished. Fortescue's definition of
law (also found in Accursius and Bracton), after all, was 'a sacred sanction commanding what is virtuous
[honesta] and forbidding the contrary.'"[55] Fortescue cited the great Italian Leonardo Bruni for his statement
that "virtue alone produces happiness."[56]
Christopher St. Germain's Doctor and Student was a classic of English jurisprudence,[57] and it was thoroughly
annotated by Thomas Jefferson.[58] St. Germain informs his readers that English lawyers generally don't use the
phrase "law of nature", but rather use "reason" as the preferred synonym.[59][60] Norman Doe notes that St.
Germain's view "is essentially Thomist," quoting Thomas Aquinas's definition of law as "an ordinance of reason
made for the common good by him who has charge of the community, and promulgated".[61]
Sir Edward Coke was the preeminent jurist of his time.[62] Coke's preeminence extended across the ocean: "For
the American revolutionary leaders, 'law' meant Sir Edward Coke's custom and right reason."[63][64] Coke
defined law as "perfect reason, which commands those things that are proper and necessary and which prohibits
contrary things".[65] For Coke, human nature determined the purpose of law; and law was superior to any one
man's reason or will.[66] Coke's discussion of natural law appears in his report of Calvin's Case (1608): "The law
of nature is that which God at the time of creation of the nature of man infused into his heart, for his
preservation and direction." In this case the judges found that "the ligeance or faith of the subject is due unto the
King by the law of nature: secondly, that the law of nature is part of the law of England: thirdly, that the law of
nature was before any judicial or municipal law: fourthly, that the law of nature is immutable." To support these
findings, the assembled judges (as reported by Coke, who was one of them) cited as authorities Aristotle, Cicero,
and the Apostle Paul; as well as Bracton, Fortescue, and St. Germain.[67]
After Coke, the most famous common law jurist of the seventeenth century is Sir Matthew Hale. Hale wrote a
treatise on natural law that circulated among English lawyers in the eighteenth century and survives in three
manuscript copies.[68] This natural-law treatise has been published as Of the Law of Nature (2015).[69] Hale's
definition of the natural law reads: "It is the Law of Almighty God given by him to Man with his Nature
discovering the morall good and moral evill of Moral Actions, commanding the former, and forbidding the latter
by the secret voice or dictate of his implanted nature, his reason, and his concience."[70] He viewed natural law
as antecedent, preparatory, and subsequent to civil government,[71] and stated that human law "cannot forbid
what the Law of Nature injoins, nor Command what the Law of Nature prohibits."[72] He cited as authorities
Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, and the Apostle Paul.[73] He was critical of Hobbes's reduction of
natural law to self-preservation and Hobbes's account of the state of nature,[74] but drew positively on Hugo
Grotius's De jure belli ac pacis, Francisco Surez's Tractatus de legibus ac deo legislatore, and John Selden's
John Selden's De jure naturali et gentium juxta disciplinam Ebraeorum.[75]
As early as the thirteenth century, it was held that "the law of nature...is the ground of all laws"[76] and by the
Chancellor and Judges that "it is required by the law of nature that every person, before he can be punish'd,
ought to be present; and if absent by contumacy, he ought to be summoned and make default".[77][78] Further, in
1824, we find it held that "proceedings in our Courts are founded upon the law of England, and that law is again
founded upon the law of nature and the revealed law of God. If the right sought to be enforced is inconsistent
with either of these, the English municipal courts cannot recognize it."[79]
American jurisprudence
The U.S. Declaration of Independence states that it has become necessary for the people of the United States to
assume "the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them". Some
early American lawyers and judges perceived natural law as too tenuous, amorphous and evanescent a legal
basis for grounding concrete rights and governmental limitations.[6] Natural law did, however, serve as authority
for legal claims and rights in some judicial decisions, legislative acts, and legal pronouncements.[80] Robert
Lowry Clinton argues that the U.S. Constitution rests on a common law foundation and the common law, in turn,
rests on a classical natural law foundation.[81]
Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
By the 17th Century, the Medieval teleological view came under intense criticism from some quarters. Thomas
Hobbes instead founded a contractualist theory of legal positivism on what all men could agree upon: what they
sought (happiness) was subject to contention, but a broad consensus could form around what they feared (violent
death at the hands of another). The natural law was how a rational human being, seeking to survive and prosper,
would act. Natural law, therefore, was discovered by considering humankind's natural rights, whereas previously
it could be said that natural rights were discovered by considering the natural law. In Hobbes' opinion, the only
way natural law could prevail was for men to submit to the commands of the sovereign. Because the ultimate
source of law now comes from the sovereign, and the sovereign's decisions need not be grounded in morality,
legal positivism is born. Jeremy Bentham's modifications on legal positivism further developed the theory.
As used by Thomas Hobbes in his treatises Leviathan and De Cive, natural law is "a precept, or general rule,
found out by reason, by which a man is forbidden to do that which is destructive of his life, or takes away the
means of preserving the same; and to omit that by which he thinks it may best be preserved."[82]
According to Hobbes, there are nineteen Laws. The first two are expounded in chapter XIV of Leviathan ("of
the first and second natural laws; and of contracts"); the others in chapter XV ("of other laws of nature").
The first Law of nature is that every man ought to endeavour peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it;
and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek and use all helps and advantages of war.
The second Law of nature is that a man be willing, when others are so too, as far forth, as for peace, and
defence of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so
much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himself.
The third Law is that men perform their covenants made. In this law of nature consisteth the fountain and
original of justice... when a covenant is made, then to break it is unjust and the definition of injustice is no
other than the not performance of covenant. And whatsoever is not unjust is just.
The fourth Law is that a man which receiveth benefit from another of mere grace, endeavour that he
which giveth it, have no reasonable cause to repent him of his good will. Breach of this law is called
ingratitude.
The fifth Law is complaisance: that every man strive to accommodate himself to the rest. The observers of
this law may be called sociable; the contrary, stubborn, insociable, forward, intractable.
The sixth Law is that upon caution of the future time, a man ought to pardon the offences past of them that
repenting, desire it.
The seventh Law is that in revenges, men look not at the greatness of the evil past, but the greatness of the
good to follow.
The eighth Law is that no man by deed, word, countenance, or gesture, declare hatred or contempt of
another. The breach of which law is commonly called contumely.
The ninth Law is that every man acknowledge another for his equal by nature. The breach of this precept
is pride.
The tenth law is that at the entrance into the conditions of peace, no man require to reserve to himself any
right, which he is not content should be reserved to every one of the rest. The breach of this precept is
arrogance, and observers of the precept are called modest.
The eleventh law is that if a man be trusted to judge between man and man, that he deal equally between
them.
The twelfth law is that such things as cannot be divided, be enjoyed in common, if it can be; and if the
quantity of the thing permit, without stint; otherwise proportionably to the number of them that have right.
The thirteenth law is the entire right, or else...the first possession (in the case of alternating use), of a thing
that can neither be divided nor enjoyed in common should be determined by lottery.
The fourteenth law is that those things which cannot be enjoyed in common, nor divided, ought to be
adjudged to the first possessor; and in some cases to the first born, as acquired by lot.
The fifteenth law is that all men that mediate peace be allowed safe conduct.
The sixteenth law is that they that are at controversie, submit their Right to the judgement of an
Arbitrator.
The seventeenth law is that no man is a fit Arbitrator in his own cause.
The eighteenth law is that no man should serve as a judge in a case if greater profit, or honour, or pleasure
apparently ariseth [for him] out of the victory of one party, than of the other.
The nineteenth law is that in a disagreement of fact, the judge should not give more weight to the
testimony of one party than another, and absent other evidence, should give credit to the testimony of
other witnesses.
Hobbes's philosophy includes a frontal assault on the founding principles of the earlier natural legal tradition,[83]
disregarding the traditional association of virtue with happiness,[84] and likewise re-defining "law" to remove
any notion of the promotion of the common good.[85] Hobbes has no use for Aristotle's association of nature
with human perfection, inverting Aristotle's use of the word "nature." Hobbes posits a primitive, unconnected
state of nature in which men, having a "natural proclivity...to hurt each other" also have "a Right to every thing,
even to one anothers body";[86] and "nothing can be Unjust" in this "warre of every man against every man" in
which human life is "solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short."[87] Rejecting Cicero's view that men join in
society primarily through "a certain social spirit which nature has implanted in man,"[88] Hobbes declares that
men join in society simply for the purpose of "getting themselves out from that miserable condition of Warre,
which is necessarily consequent...to the naturall Passions of men, when there is no visible Power to keep them in
awe."[89] As part of his campaign against the classical idea of natural human sociability, Hobbes inverts that
fundamental natural legal maxim, the Golden Rule. Hobbes's version is "Do not that to another, which thou
wouldst not have done to thy selfe."[90]
Cumberland's rebuttal of Hobbes

The English cleric Richard Cumberland wrote a lengthy and influential attack on Hobbes's depiction of
individual self-interest as the essential feature of human motivation. Historian Knud Haakonssen has noted that
in the eighteenth century, Cumberland was commonly placed alongside Alberico Gentili, Hugo Grotius and
Samuel Pufendorf "in the triumvirate of seventeenth-century founders of the 'modern' school of natural law."[91]
The eighteenth-century philosophers Shaftesbury and Hutcheson "were obviously inspired in part by
Cumberland."[92] Historian Jon Parkin likewise describes Cumberland's work as "one of the most important
works of ethical and political theory of the seventeenth century."[93] Parkin observes that much of Cumberland's
material "is derived from Roman Stoicism, particularly from the work of Cicero, as "Cumberland deliberately
cast his engagement with Hobbes in the mould of Cicero's debate between the Stoics, who believed that nature
could provide an objective morality, and Epicureans, who argued that morality was human, conventional and
self-interested."[94] In doing so, Cumberland de-emphasized the overlay of Christian dogma (in particular, the
doctrine of "original sin" and the corresponding presumption that humans are incapable of "perfecting"
themselves without divine intervention) that had accreted to natural law in the Middle Ages.
By way of contrast to Hobbes's multiplicity of laws, Cumberland states in the very first sentence of his Treatise
of the Laws of Nature that "all the Laws of Nature are reduc'd to that one, of Benevolence toward all Rationals."
[95] He later clarifies: "By the name Rationals I beg leave to understand, as well God as Man; and I do it upon
the Authority of Cicero." Cumberland argues that the mature development ("perfection") of human nature
involves the individual human willing and acting for the common good.[96] For Cumberland, human
interdependence precludes Hobbes's natural right of each individual to wage war against all the rest for personal
survival. However, Haakonssen warns against reading Cumberland as a proponent of "enlightened self-interest."
Rather, the "proper moral love of humanity" is "a disinterested love of God through love of humanity in
ourselves as well as others."[97] Cumberland concludes that actions "principally conducive to our Happiness" are
those that promote "the Honour and Glory of God" and also "Charity and Justice towards men."[98] Cumberland
emphasizes that desiring the well-being of our fellow humans is essential to the "pursuit of our own Happiness."
[99] He cites "reason" as the authority for his conclusion that happiness consists in "the most extensive
Benevolence," but he also mentions as "Essential Ingredients of Happiness" the "Benevolent Affections,"
meaning "Love and Benevolence towards others," as well as "that Joy, which arises from their Happiness."[100]
Liberal natural law

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to
reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2009) (Learn how and when to
remove this template message)
Dr Alberico Gentili, the founder of the science of international law.
Liberal natural law grew out of the medieval Christian natural law theories and out of Hobbes' revision of
natural law, sometimes in an uneasy balance of the two.
Sir Alberico Gentili and Hugo Grotius based their philosophies of international law on natural law. In particular,
his writings on freedom of the seas and just war theory directly appealed to natural law. About natural law itself,
he wrote that "even the will of an omnipotent being cannot change or abrogate" natural law, which "would
maintain its objective validity even if we should assume the impossible, that there is no God or that he does not
care for human affairs." (De iure belli ac pacis, Prolegomeni XI). This is the famous argument etiamsi daremus
(non esse Deum), that made natural law no longer dependent on theology. However, German church-historians
Ernst Wolf and M. Elze disagreed and claimed that Grotius' concept of natural law did have a theological basis.
[101] In Grotius' view, the Old Testament contained moral precepts (e.g. the Decalogue) which Christ confirmed
and therefore were still valid. Moreover, they were useful in explaining the content of natural law. Both biblical
revelation and natural law originated in God and could therefore not contradict each other.[102]
In a similar way, Samuel Pufendorf gave natural law a theological foundation and applied it to his concepts of
government and international law.[103]
John Locke incorporated natural law into many of his theories and philosophy, especially in Two Treatises of
Government. There is considerable debate about whether his conception of natural law was more akin to that of
Aquinas (filtered through Richard Hooker) or Hobbes' radical reinterpretation, though the effect of Locke's
understanding is usually phrased in terms of a revision of Hobbes upon Hobbesean contractualist grounds.
Locke turned Hobbes' prescription around, saying that if the ruler went against natural law and failed to protect
"life, liberty, and property," people could justifiably overthrow the existing state and create a new one.[104]
While Locke spoke in the language of natural law, the content of this law was by and large protective of natural
rights, and it was this language that later liberal thinkers preferred. Political philosopher Jeremy Waldron has
pointed out that Locke's political thought was based on "a particular set of Protestant Christian assumptions."
[105] To Locke, the content of natural law was identical with biblical ethics as laid down especially in the
Decalogue, Christ's teaching and exemplary life, and St. Paul's admonitions.[106] Locke derived the concept of
basic human equality, including the equality of the sexes ("Adam and Eve"), from Genesis 1, 2628, the
starting-point of the theological doctrine of Imago Dei.[107] One of the consequences is that as all humans are
created equally free, governments need the consent of the governed.[108] Thomas Jefferson, arguably echoing
Locke, appealed to unalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence, "We hold these truths to be self-
evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."[109] The Lockean idea that governments need
the consent of the governed was also fundamental to the Declaration of Independence, as the American
Revolutionaries used it as justification for their separation from the British crown.[110]
The Belgian philosopher of law Frank van Dun is one among those who are elaborating a secular
conception[111] of natural law in the liberal tradition. Libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard argues that "the very
existence of a natural law discoverable by reason is a potentially powerful threat to the status quo and a standing
reproach to the reign of blindly traditional custom or the arbitrary will of the State apparatus."[112] Ludwig von
Mises states that he relaid the general sociological and economic foundations of the liberal doctrine upon
utilitarianism, rather than natural law, but R.A. Gonce argues that "the reality of the argument constituting his
system overwhelms his denial."[113] Murray Rothbard, however, says that Gonce makes a lot of errors and
distortions in the analysis of Mises's works, including making confusions about the term which Mises uses to
refer to scientific laws, "laws of nature", saying it characterizes Mises as a natural law philosopher.[114] David
Gordon notes, "When most people speak of natural law, what they have in mind is the contention that morality
can be derived from human nature. If human beings are rational animals of such-and-such a sort, then the moral
virtues are...(filling in the blanks is the difficult part)."[115]
Economist and philosopher F. A. Hayek said that, originally, "the term 'natural' was used to describe an
orderliness or regularity that was not the product of deliberate human will. Together with 'organism' it was one
of the two terms generally understood to refer to the spontaneously grown in contrast to the invented or
designed. Its use in this sense had been inherited from the stoic philosophy, had been revived in the twelfth
century, and it was finally under its flag that the late Spanish Schoolmen developed the foundations of the
genesis and functioning of spontaneously formed social institutions."[116] The idea that 'natural' was "the
product of designing reason" is a product of a seventeenth century rationalist reinterpretation of the law of
nature. Luis Molina, for example, when referred to the 'natural' price, explained that it is "so called because 'it
results from the thing itself without regard to laws and decrees, but is dependent on many circumstances which
alter it, such as the sentiments of men, their estimation of different uses, often even in consequence of whims
and pleasures".[117] And even John Locke, when talking about the foundations of natural law and explaining
what he thought when citing "reason", said: "By reason, however, I do not think is meant here that faculty of the
understanding which forms traint of thought and deduces proofs, but certain definite principles of action from
which spring all virtues and whatever is necessary for the proper moulding of morals."[118]
This anti-rationalist approach to human affairs, for Hayek, was the same which guided Scottish enlightenment
thinkers, such as Adam Smith, David Hume and Adam Ferguson, to make their case for liberty.[119] For them,
no one can have the knowledge necessary to plan society, and this "natural" or "spontaneous" order of society
shows how it can efficiently "plan" bottom-up.[120] Also, the idea that law is just a product of deliberate design,
denied by natural law and linked to legal positivism, can easily generate totalitarianism: "If law is wholly the
product of deliberate design, whatever the designer decrees to be law is just by definition and unjust law
becomes a contradiction in terms. The will of the duly authorized legislator is then wholly unfettered and guided
solely by his concrete interests".[121] This idea is wrong because law cannot be just a product of "reason": "no
system of articulated law can be applied except within a framework of generally recognized but often
unarticulated rules of justice".[122]
However, a secular critique of the natural law doctrine was stated by Pierre Charron in his De la sagesse (1601):
"The sign of a natural law must be the universal respect in which it is held, for if there was anything that nature
had truly commanded us to do, we would undoubtedly obey it universally: not only would every nation respect
it, but every individual. Instead there is nothing in the world that is not subject to contradiction and dispute,
nothing that is not rejected, not just by one nation, but by many; equally, there is nothing that is strange and (in
the opinion of many) unnatural that is not approved in many countries, and authorized by their customs."
Islamic natural law

Ab Rayhn al-Brn, an Islamic scholar and polymath scientist, understood natural law as the survival of the
fittest. He argued that the antagonism between human beings can only be overcome through a divine law, which
he believed to have been sent through prophets. This is also the position of the Ashari school, the largest school
of Sunni theology.[123] Averroes (Ibn Rushd), in his treatise on Justice and Jihad and his commentary on Plato's
Republic, writes that the human mind can know of the unlawfulness of killing and stealing and thus of the five
maqasid or higher intents of the Islamic sharia or to protect religion, life, property, offspring, and reason. The
concept of natural law entered the mainstream of Western culture through his Aristotelian commentaries,
influencing the subsequent Averroist movement and the writings of Thomas Aquinas.[124]
The Maturidi school, the second largest school of Sunni theology, posits the existence of a form of natural law.
Abu Mansur al-Maturidi stated that the human mind could know of the existence of God and the major forms of
'good' and 'evil' without the help of revelation. Al-Maturidi gives the example of stealing, which is known to be
evil by reason alone due to man's working hard for his property. Killing, fornication, and (for certain Muslims)
drinking alcohol were all 'evils' the human mind could know of according to al-Maturidi. The concept of Istislah
in Islamic law bears some similarities to the natural law tradition in the West, as exemplified by Thomas
Aquinas. However, whereas natural law deems good what is self-evidently good, according as it tends towards
the fulfilment of the person, istislah calls good whatever is connected to one of five "basic goods". Al-Ghazali
abstracted these "basic goods" from the legal precepts in the Qur'an and Sunnah: they are religion, life, reason,
lineage and property. Some add also "honour". Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya also posited that human reason could
discern between 'great sins' and good deeds.[citation needed]
Catholic natural law jurisprudence
See also: Treatise on Law and Determinatio
This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and
when to remove these template messages) The neutrality of this article is disputed. Relevant discussion may be
found on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until conditions to do so are met. (October 2014)
(Learn how and when to remove this template message) This section needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged
and removed. (April 2009) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) (Learn how and when to
remove this template message)
Albertus Magnus, O.P. (c. 12001280).
Thomas Aquinas (12251274).
The Catholic Church holds the view of natural law introduced

by Albertus Magnus and elaborated by Thomas Aquinas,[125]
particularly in his Summa Theologiae, and often as filtered Part of a series on
through the School of Salamanca. This view is also shared by Catholic philosophy
some Protestants,[126] and was delineated by Anglican writer
C.S. Lewis in his works Mere Christianity and The Abolition
of Man.[127]
The Catholic Church understands human beings to consist of

body and mind, the physical and the non-physical (or soul
perhaps), and that the two are inextricably linked.[128]
Humans are capable of discerning the difference between Aquinas, Scotus and Ockham
good and evil because they have a conscience.[129] There are Ethics
many manifestations of the good that we can pursue. Some,
like procreation, are common to other animals, while others, Natural law
like the pursuit of truth, are inclinations peculiar to the Virtue ethics
capacities of human beings.[130] Catholic personalism
Catholic social teaching
To know what is right, one must use one's reason and apply it Branches
to Thomas Aquinas' precepts. This reason is believed to be
embodied, in its most abstract form, in the concept of a Scholasticism
primary precept: "Good is to be sought, evil avoided."[131] St. Thomism
Thomas explains that: Neo-Scholasticism
Scotism
there belongs to the natural law, first, certain most Occamism
general precepts, that are known to all; and secondly, Augustinian
certain secondary and more detailed precepts, which Molinism
are, as it were, conclusions following closely from first
principles. As to those general principles, the natural Philosophers
law, in the abstract, can nowise be blotted out from
Saint Thomas Aquinas
men's hearts. But it is blotted out in the case of a
particular action, insofar as reason is hindered from Saint Augustine
applying the general principle to a particular point of Saint Albertus Magnus
practice, on account of concupiscence or some other Saint Paul of Tarsus
passion, as stated above (77, 2). But as to the other, i.e., Saint Ambrose
the secondary precepts, the natural law can be blotted Saint Jerome
out from the human heart, either by evil persuasions, Saint Gregory the Great
just as in speculative matters errors occur in respect of Saint Benedict
necessary conclusions; or by vicious customs and Saint John Paul II
corrupt habits, as among some men, theft, and even Edith Stein (Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross)
unnatural vices, as the Apostle states (Rm. i), were not Bl. Duns Scotus
esteemed sinful.[132] William of Ockham
Alexander of Hales
However, while the primary and immediate precepts cannot Henry of Ghent
be "blotted out", the secondary precepts can be. Therefore, for Francis Mayron
a deontological ethical theory they are open to a surprisingly Luis de Molina
large amount of interpretation and flexibility. Any rule that Peter Lombard
helps man to live up to the primary or subsidiary precepts can
Peter Abelard
be a secondary precept, for example:
Giles of Rome
Drunkenness is wrong because it injures one's health, Jacques Maritain
and worse, destroys one's ability to reason, which is Alasdair MacIntyre
fundamental to man as a rational animal (i.e., does not
support self-preservation).
Theft is wrong because it destroys social relations, and
Catholicism portal
man is by nature a social animal (i.e., does not support
the subsidiary precept of living in society).
Natural moral law is concerned with both exterior and interior Philosophy portal
acts, also known as action and motive. Simply doing the right
thing is not enough; to be truly moral one's motive must be v
right as well. For example, helping an old lady across the road t
(good exterior act) to impress someone (bad interior act) is
e
wrong. However, good intentions don't always lead to good
actions. The motive must coincide with the cardinal or
theological virtues. Cardinal virtues are acquired through
reason applied to nature; they are:
1. Prudence
2. Justice
3. Temperance
4. Fortitude
The theological virtues are:
1. Faith
2. Hope
3. Charity
According to Aquinas, to lack any of these virtues is to lack the ability to make a moral choice. For example,
consider a man who possesses the virtues of justice, prudence, and fortitude, yet lacks temperance. Due to his
lack of self-control and desire for pleasure, despite his good intentions, he will find himself swaying from the
moral path.
Contemporary jurisprudence
In jurisprudence, natural law can refer to the several doctrines:
That just laws are immanent in nature; that is, they can be "discovered" or "found" but not "created" by
such things as a bill of rights;
That they can emerge by the natural process of resolving conflicts, as embodied by the evolutionary
process of the common law; or
That the meaning of law is such that its content cannot be determined except by reference to moral
principles. These meanings can either oppose or complement each other, although they share the common
trait that they rely on inherence as opposed to design in finding just laws.
Whereas legal positivism would say that a law can be unjust without it being any less a law, a natural law
jurisprudence would say that there is something legally deficient about an unjust norm. Legal interpretivism,
famously defended in the English-speaking world by Ronald Dworkin, claims to have a position different from
both natural law and positivism.
Besides utilitarianism and Kantianism, natural law jurisprudence has in common with virtue ethics that it is a
live option for a first principles ethics theory in analytic philosophy.
The concept of natural law was very important in the development of the English common law. In the struggles
between Parliament and the monarch, Parliament often made reference to the Fundamental Laws of England,
which were at times said to embody natural law principles since time immemorial and set limits on the power of
the monarchy. According to William Blackstone, however, natural law might be useful in determining the
content of the common law and in deciding cases of equity, but was not itself identical with the laws of England.
Nonetheless, the implication of natural law in the common law tradition has meant that the great opponents of
natural law and advocates of legal positivism, like Jeremy Bentham, have also been staunch critics of the
common law.
Natural law jurisprudence is currently undergoing a period of reformulation (as is legal positivism). The most
prominent contemporary natural law jurist, Australian John Finnis, is based in Oxford, but there are also
Americans Germain Grisez, Robert P. George, and Canadian Joseph Boyle and Brazil Emdio Brasileiro. All
have tried to construct a new version of natural law. The 19th-century anarchist and legal theorist, Lysander
Spooner, was also a figure in the expression of modern natural law.
"New Natural Law" as it is sometimes called, originated with Grisez. It focuses on "basic human goods," such as
human life, knowledge, and aesthetic experience, which are self-evidently and intrinsically worthwhile, and
states that these goods reveal themselves as being incommensurable with one another.
The tensions between the natural law and the positive law have played, and continue to play a key role in the
development of international law.[133]
See also
Moral realism
Positive law Natural justice
Aristotle Natural order
Antigone Natural rights
Thomas Aquinas Naturalistic fallacy
Hadley Arkes Neo-Scholasticism
Jean Barbeyrac Non-aggression principle
J. Budziszewski Norm of reciprocity
Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui Objectivism (philosophy)
Classical liberalism Orders of creation
Richard Cumberland Philosophy of law
Declarationism Samuel von Pufendorf
Francisco Elias de Tejada y Spinola Social contract
John Finnis Purposive theory
Henry George Rule of law
Robert P. George Rule according to higher law
Enrique Gil Robles School of Salamanca
Hugo Grotius Spontaneous order
Thomas Hobbes Stoicism
Francis Hutcheson Substantive due process
International legal theory Thomism
Land Value Taxation Tit for tat
John Locke Treatise on Law
Determinatio Unenumerated rights
Jurisprudence Universality (philosophy)
Legal positivism Emerich de Vattel
Liberalism White Rose Society
Libertarianism Xeer
Lysander Spooner
Moral realism
Notes
1. ^ a b c d e Strauss, Leo (1968). "Natural Law". International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences.
Macmillan.
2. ^ Rommen, Heinrich A., The Natural Law: A Study in Legal and Social Philosophy trans. Thomas R.
Hanley, O.S.B., Ph.D. (B. Herder Book Co., 1947 [reprinted 1959] ), p. 5
3. ^ a b c Shellens, Max Solomon (1959). "Aristotle on Natural Law". Natural Law Forum. 4 (1): 72100.
doi:10.1093/ajj/4.1.72.
4. ^ "Declaration of Independence". 1776.
5. ^ Blackstone, William. Commentaries on the Laws of England. Clarendon Press.
6. ^ a b Douglas E. Edlin (Jul 2006). "Judicial Review without a Constitution". Polity. Palgrave Macmillan
Journals. 38 (3): 34568. JSTOR 3877071. doi:10.1057/palgrave.polity.2300065.
7. ^ "Natural Law". Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Columbia University Press. 2007.
8. ^ Wild, John (1953). Plato's Modern Enemies and the Theory of Natural Law. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. p. 136.
9. ^ Plato, Gorgias 508a.
10. ^ Plato, The Republic, 518bd.
11. ^ Plato, The Republic, 540a, 517bd.
12. ^ Plato, Symposium, 205e6a.
13. ^ Plato, Symposium, 211de.
14. ^ Plato, The Republic, 428e9.

15. ^ Jaffa, Harry (1979) [1952]. Thomism and Aristotelianism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
16. ^ Corbett, Ross J. (April 2012). The Philosophic Context of the Development of Natural Law. Midwest
Political Science Association. SSRN 2021235 .
17. ^ Corbett, Ross J. (Summer 2009). "The Question of Natural Law in Aristotle". History of Political
Thought. 30 (2): 22950.
18. ^ Aristotle, Rhetoric 1373b28.
19. ^ Aristotle, Rhetoric, Book I Chapter 13, http://rhetoric.eserver.org/aristotle/rhet1-13.html
20. ^ Lloyd's Introduction to Jurisprudence, Seventh Edition.
21. ^ Carlyle, A. J. (1903). A History of Medieval Political Theory in the West, vol. 1. Edinburgh. pp. 89.
22. ^ McIlwain, Charles H. (1932). The Growth of Political Thought in the West: From the Greeks to the End
of the Middle Ages. New York. pp. 11415.
23. ^ Cicero, De Legibus, bk. 1, sec. 1617.
24. ^ a b Barham, Francis (1842). "Introduction". The Political Works of Marcus Tullius Cicero. London:
Edmund Spettigue.
25. ^ Cicero, De Legibus (Keyes translation), bk. 2, sec. 11.
26. ^ Cicero, De Legibus (Keyes translation), bk. 1, sec. 58.
27. ^ Cochrane, Charles Norris (1957). Christianity and Classical Culture: A Study of Thought and Action
from Augustus to Augustine. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 39.
28. ^ Corwin, Edward S. (1955). The "Higher Law" Background of American Constitutional Law. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press. pp. 1718.
29. ^ Thomas Aquinas, Treatise on Law (Summa Theologica, Questions 9097), ed. Stanley Parry (Chicago:
Henry Regnery Company, 1969), p. 18
30. ^ Quoted in Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought(Cambridge, 1978), vol. 1, p.
89.
31. ^ Boyer, Allen D. (2004). "Sir Edward Coke, Ciceronianus: Classical Rhetoric and the Common Law
Tradition". In Allen D. Boyer. Law, Liberty, and Parliament: Selected Essays on the Writings of Sir
Edward Coke. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. pp. 22425.
32. ^ a b Scott, William Robert (1966) [1900]. Francis Hutcheson: His Life, Teaching, and Position in the
History of Philosophy. New York: Augustus M. Kelley.
33. ^ Reinhold, Meyer (1984). Classica Americana: The Greek and Roman Heritage in the United States.
Detroit: Wayne State University Press. p. 150.
34. ^ Botein, Stephen (AprilMay 1978). "Cicero as Role Model for Early American Lawyers: A Case Study
in Classical 'Influence' ". The Classical Journal. 73 (4): 315.
35. ^ Burlamaqui, Jean Jacques (2006) [1763]. The Principles of Natural and Politic Law. Trans. Thomas
Nugent. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. book I, part 2, ch. 5, sec. 11.
36. ^ Wilson, James (1967). "Of the Law of Nature". In McCloskey, Robert Green. The Works of James
Wilson. 1. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. pp. 14546.
37. ^ Farrell, James M. (December 1989). "John Adams's Autobiography: The Ciceronian Paradigm and the
Quest for Fame". The New England Quarterly. 62 (4): 506. doi:10.2307/366395.
38. ^ Adams, John (1979) [1797]. A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of
America. 1 (3 ed.). Darmstadt: Scientia Verlag Aalen. xviixviii.
39. ^ Wilson, Douglas L., ed. (1989). Jefferson's Literary Commonplace Book. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press. p. 159.
40. ^ Jefferson to Amos J. Cook, 21 Jan. 1816; quoted in Jefferson's Literary Commonplace Book, p. 161.
41. ^ Carlyle, A. J. (1903). A History of Medieval Political Theory in the West. 1. New York: G.P. Putnam's
Sons. p. 83.
42. ^ Summa Theologica, I-II, Q. 91, Art. 2 "I answer that"
43. ^ Summa Theologicae, Q. 95, A. 2.
44. ^ Burns, Tony (2000). "Aquinas's Two Doctrines of Natural Law". Political Studies. 48 (5): 92946.
doi:10.1111/1467-9248.00288.
45. ^ Natural Law aspects of theory (PDF) (PDF). Rsrevision.com.
46. ^ Rommen, Heinrich A. (1998) [1947]. The Natural Law: A Study in Legal and Social History and
Philosophy. Trans. and rev. Thomas R. Hanley. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. pp. 10001.
47. ^ Thorne, Samuel E. (1968). "Translator's Introduction". In de Bracton, Henry. Of the Laws and Customs
of England. 1. trans. Samuel E. Thorne. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press and
The Selden Society. p. xxxiii.
48. ^ McIlwain, Charles Howard (1958) [1947]. Constitutionalism: Ancient and Modern (rev. ed.). Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press. pp. 7189.
49. ^ Mullett, Charles F. (1966) [1933]. Fundamental Law and the American Revolution 17601776. New
York: Octagon Books. p. 33.
50. ^ de Bracton, Henry (1968). Of the Laws and Customs of England. 2. trans. Samuel E. Thorne.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press and The Selden Society. p. 22.
51. ^ de Bracton, Henry (1968). Of the Laws and Customs of England. 2. trans. Samuel E. Thorne.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press and The Selden Society. p. 23.
52. ^ Brown, Imogene E. (1981). American Aristides: A Biography of George Wythe. East Brunswick, NJ:
Associated University Presses. p. 77.
53. ^ Hazeltine, Harold Dexter (1949). "General Preface: The Age of Littleton and Fortescue". In Fortescue,
John. De Laudibus Legum Anglie. ed. and trans. S. B. Chrimes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
pp. l, xxviii.
54. ^ Sandoz, Ellis (1993). "Editor's Introduction". The Roots of Liberty: Magna Carta, Ancient Constitution,
and the Anglo-American Tradition of Rule of Law. ed. Ellis Sandoz. Columbia, MO: University of
Missouri Press. p. 7.
55. ^ Doe, Norman (1990). Fundamental Authority in Late Medieval English Law. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. p. 49.
56. ^ Fortescue, John (1949). Chrimes, S. B., ed. De Laudibus Legum Anglie. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. p. l1.
57. ^ Vinogradoff, Paul (Oct 1908). "Reason and Conscience in Sixteenth-Century Jurisprudence". The Law
Quarterly Review. 96: 37374.
58. ^ Mullett, Charles F. (1966) [1933]. Fundamental Law and the American Revolution, 17601776. New
York: Octagon Books. p. 39.
59. ^ Doctor and Student, bk. 1, ch. 5.
60. ^ Doe, Norman (1990). Fundamental Authority in Late Medieval English Law. Cambridge University
Press. pp. 11213.
61. ^ Doe, Norman (1990). Fundamental Authority in Late Medieval English Law. Cambridge University
Press. p. 113., note 23, citing Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1a, 2ae, 90, 4.
62. ^ Sir Edward Coke, The Selected Writings and Speeches of Sir Edward Coke, ed. Steve Sheppard
(Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003), vol. 1, p. xxvii.
63. ^ John Phillip Reid, In a Defiant Stance: The Conditions of Law in Massachusetts Bay, The Irish
Comparison, and the Coming of the American Revolution (University Park, Penn.: The Pennsylvania State
University Press, 1977), 71.
64. ^ Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison in 1826 that before the Revolution, the first volume of
Coke's Institutes of the Laws of England "was the universal elementary book of law students, and a
sounder Whig never wrote, nor of profounder learning in the orthodox doctrines of the British
constitution, or in what were called English liberties." See The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 16, p.
155.
65. ^ John Underwood Lewis, "Sir Edward Coke (15521634): His Theory of 'Artificial Reason' as a Context
for Modern Basic Legal Theory," in Law, Liberty, and Parliament: Selected Essays on the Writings of Sir
Edward Coke, ed. Allen D. Boyer (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2004), pp. 10809; citing Edward Coke,
First Part of the Institutes, 319b.
66. ^ Lewis, "Sir Edward Coke (15521634): His Theory of 'Artificial Reason' as a Context for Modern Basic
Legal Theory,", p. 120.
67. ^ Sir Edward Coke, The Selected Writings and Speeches of Sir Edward Coke, ed. Steve Sheppard
(Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003), vol. 1, pp. 19597.
68. ^ British Library, London, Add. MS 18235, fols. 41147 [1693]; Harley MS 7159, fols. 1266 [1696];
Hargrave MS 485 [late-eighteenth century]
69. ^ Matthew Hale, Of the Law of Nature, ed. David S. Sytsma (CLP Academic, 2015).
70. ^ Hale, Of the Law of Nature, 41.
73. ^ Hale, Of the Law of Nature, 41, 52, 64, 15051.
74. ^ Hale, Of the Law of Nature, 43, 86, 94.
75. ^ Hale, Of the Law of Nature, 78, 17, 49, 63, 11119, 192.
76. ^ 8 Edw 4 fol. 12
77. ^ 9 Ed. 4 fol. 14
78. ^ Fort. 206
79. ^ 2 B. & C. 471
80. ^ Reid, John Phillip (1986). Constitutional History of the American Revolution: The Authority of Rights.
University of Wisconsin Press. pp. 9091.
81. ^ Clinton, Robert Lowry (1997). God and Man in the Law: The Foundations of Anglo-American
Constitutionalism. University Press of Kansas.
82. ^ Hobbes, Leviathan, pt. 1, ch. 14 (p. 64)
83. ^ Paul A. Rahe, Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution
(Chapel Hill, 1992), pp. 37273
84. ^ A Hobbes Dictionary: http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/tocnode?
id=g9780631192626_chunk_g978063119262612_ss1-2
85. ^ James R. Stoner, Jr., Common Law and Liberal Theory: Coke, Hobbes, and the Origins of American
Constitutionalism (Lawrence, Kansas, 1992), 71; see also John Phillip Reid, "In the Taught Tradition: The
Meaning of Law in Massachusetts-Bay Two-Hundred Years Ago," Suffolk University Law Review 14
(1980), 93840.
86. ^ Thomas Hobbes, De Cive (The Citizen), ed. Sterling P. Lamprecht (New York, 1949; orig. 1642), ch. 2,
sec. 2 (p. 29).
87. ^ Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme, & Power of a Common-Wealth Ecclesiasticall and
Civill (Mineola, N.Y., 2006; orig. 1651), pt. 1, ch. 14 (p. 72); p. 1, ch. 13 (pp. 21, 70).
88. ^ Cicero, De re publica (Keyes translation), bk. 1, ch. 25, sec. 39
89. ^ Hobbes, Leviathan, pt. 2, ch. 17 (p. 93)
90. ^ Hobbes, Leviathan, pt. 1, ch. 15 (p. 79)(emphasis in original). See also Rahe, Republics Ancient and
Modern, p. 387.
91. ^ Knud Haakonssen, "The Character and Obligation of Natural Law according to Richard Cumberland,"
in English Philosophy in the Age of Locke, ed. M.A. Stewart (Oxford, 2000), 29.
92. ^ Haakonssen, Natural Law and Moral Philosophy: From Grotius to the Scottish Enlightenment
(Cambridge, 1996), 51.
93. ^ Jon Parkin, Science, Religion and Politics in Restoration England: Richard Cumberland's De Legibus
Naturae (Bury St. Edmunds, United Kingdom, 1999), 8.
94. ^ Parkin, 8.
95. ^ Richard Cumberland, A Treatise of the Laws of Nature, trans. John Maxwell (Indianapolis, 2005; orig.
1727), "Contents" (p. 237). Cumberland's treatise was originally published in Latin in 1672. A Latin
edition was published in Germany in 1684.
96. ^ Cumberland, ch. 1, sec. 33 (p. 356)
97. ^ Haakonssen, "The Character and Obligation of Natural Law according to Richard Cumberland," pp. 34,
35.
98. ^ Cumberland, ch. 5, sec. 13 (pp. 52324).
99. ^ Cumberland, ch. 5, sec. 12 (p. 525)
100. ^ Cumberland, ch. 5, sec. 15 (pp. 52728).
101. ^ Ernst Wolf, Naturrecht, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3. Auflage, Band IV (1960),
Tbingen (Germany), col. 1357
102. ^ M. Elze, Grotius, Hugo, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3. Auflage, Band II (1958), col.
1885
103. ^ H. Hohlwein, Pufendorf, Samuel Freiherr von, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3.
Auflage, Band V (1961), col. 721
104. ^ John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, Second Treatise, Chapter 13, 149
105. ^ Jeremy Waldron (2002), God, Locke, and Equality: Christian Foundations in Locke's Political Thought.
Cambridge University Press, p. 13
106. ^ Jeremy Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality, pp. 1215, 4546, 9597, 19598, 230
107. ^ Jeremy Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality, pp. 2143
108. ^ Jeremy Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality, p. 136
109. ^ Pangle, The Spirit of Modern Republicanism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 209.
110. ^ Cf. Robert Middlekauff (2005),The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 17631789, Revised
and Expanded Edition, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-531588-2, pp. 4952, 136
111. ^ http://users.ugent.be/~frvandun/Texts/Logica/NaturalLaw.htm
112. ^ Rothbard, Murray. "Natural Law Versus Positive Law". The Ethics of Liberty (PDF). p. 17.
113. ^ R. A. Gonce (Apr 1973). "Natural Law and Ludwig von Mises' Praxeology and Economic Science".
Southern Economic Journal. Southern Economic Association. 39 (4): 490507. JSTOR 1056701.
doi:10.2307/1056701.
114. ^ Rothbard, Murray (Summer 1980). "Ludwig von Mises and Natural Law: A Comment on Professor
Gonce". The Journal of Libertarian Studies. IV.
115. ^ Gordon, David. "Review of In Defense of Natural Law by Robert George". Ludwig von Mises Institute.
116. ^ Hayek, Friedrich. Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PDF). pp. 9798.
117. ^ Hayek, Friedrich. Law, Legislation and Liberty (PDF). p. 21.
118. ^ Locke, John (1954). Essays Concerning the Law of Nature. Oxford: W. von Leyden. p. 111.
119. ^ Hayek, Friedrich. Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PDF). pp. 9899.
120. ^ Hayek, Friedrich (1991). The Trend of Economic Thinking (PDF). Routledge. pp. 2224.
121. ^ Hayek, Friedrich (1978). The Constitution of Liberty (PDF). The University of Chicago Press. pp. 238
39.
122. ^ Hayek, Friedrich. Studies In Philosophy, Politics And Economics (PDF). p. 102.
123. ^ Corbin, Henry (1993) [1964]. History of Islamic Philosophy. Translated by Liadain Sherrard and Philip
Sherrard. London; Kegan Paul International in association with Islamic Publications for The Institute of
Ismaili Studies. p. 39. ISBN 0-7103-0416-1. (original in French.)
124. ^ Roeber, A. G. (October 2001). "What the Law Requires Is Written on Their Hearts: Noachic and
Natural Law among German-Speakers in Early Modern North America". William and Mary Quarterly.
Third Series. 58 (4): 883912 [887]. doi:10.2307/2674504.
125. ^ Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, n. 44; International Theological Commission, The Search for
Universal Ethics: A New Look at the Natural Law, n. 37.
126. ^ A Biblical Case for Natural Law, by David VanDrunen. Studies in Christian Social Ethics and
Economics, no. 1. Grand Rapids: Acton Institute, 2006.
127. ^ Raymond Paul Tripp (1975). Man's "natural powers": essays for and about C.S. Lewis. Society for New
Language Study.
128. ^ Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, n. 48.
129. ^ Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, n. 54 ff.
130. ^ International Theological Commission, The Search for Universal Ethics: A New Look at the Natural
Law, n. 46.
131. ^ Summa Theologica III, Q. 94, A. 2.
132. ^ Summa Theologica III, Q. 94, A. 6.
133. ^ Prabhakar Singh, "From 'narcissistic' positive international law to 'universal' natural international law:
the dialectics of 'absentee colonialism'", African Journal of International and Comparative Law, 2008,
16(1), 5682
References
Adams, John. 1797. A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America. 3rd
edition. Philadelphia; repr. Darmstadt, Germany: Scientia Verlag Aalen, 1979.
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics.
Aristotle. Rhetoric.
Aristotle. Politics.
Aquinas. Summa Theologica.
Barham, Francis. Introduction to The Political Works of Marcus Tullius Cicero.
Blackstone, William. 17659. Commentaries on the Laws of England.
Botein, Stephen. 1978. "Cicero as Role Model for Early American Lawyers: A Case Study in Classical
'Influence'". The Classical Journal 73, no. 4 (AprilMay).
Boyer, Allen D. 2004. "Sir Edward Coke, Ciceronianus: Classical Rhetoric and the Common Law
Tradition." in Law, Liberty, and Parliament: Selected Essays on the Writings of Sir Edward Coke, ed.
Allen D. Boyer. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.
Burlamaqui, Jean Jacques. 1763. The Principles of Natural and Politic Law. Trans. Thomas Nugent.
Repr., Indianapolis: The Liberty Fund, 2006.
Burns, Tony. 2000. "Aquinas's Two Doctrines of Natural Law." Political Studies 48. pp. 92946.
Carlyle, A. J. 1903. A History of Medieval Political Theory in the West. vol. 1. Edinburgh.
Cicero. De Legibus.
Cochrane, Charles Norris. 1957. Christianity and Classical Culture: A Study of Thought and Action from
Augustus to Augustine. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Corbett, R. J. 2009. "The Question of Natural Law in Aristotle." History of Political Thought 30, no. 2
(Summer): 22950
Corwin, Edward S. 1955. The "Higher Law" Background of American Constitutional Law. Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press.
Edlin, Douglas E. 2006. "Judicial Review Without a Constitution." Polity 38, no. 3 (July): 34568.
Farrell, James M. 1989. "John Adams's Autobiography: The Ciceronian Paradigm and the Quest for
Fame." The New England Quarterly 62, no. 4 (Dec. ).
Haakonssen, Knud. 1996. Natural Law and Moral Philosophy: From Grotius to the Scottish
Enlightenment. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Haakonssen, Knud. 2000. "The Character and Obligation of Natural Law according to Richard
Cumberland." In English Philosophy in the Age of Locke, ed. M.A. Stewart. Oxford.
Heinze, Eric, 2013. The Concept of Injustice (Routledge)
Jaffa, Harry V. 1952. Thomism and Aristotelianism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Jefferson's Literary Commonplace Book. Trans. and ed. Douglas L. Wilson. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1989.
Laing, Jacqueline A & Wilcox, Russell eds., 2013. The Natural Law Reader, Oxford: Wiley Blackwell,
2013.
McIlwain, Charles Howard. 1932. The Growth of Political Thought in the West: From the Greeks to the
End of the Middle Ages. New York: The Macmillan Company.
"Natural Law." International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. New York, 1968.
Reinhold, Meyer. 1984. Classica Americana: The Greek and Roman Heritage in the United States.
Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
Rommen, Heinrich A. 1947. The Natural Law: A Study in Legal and Social History and Philosophy.
Trans. and rev. Thomas R. Hanley. B. Herder Book Co.; repr. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1998.
Scott, William Robert. 1900. Francis Hutcheson: His Life, Teaching, and Position in the History of
Philosophy Cambridge; repr. New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1966.
Shellens, Max Salomon. 1959. "Aristotle on Natural Law." Natural Law Forum 4, no. 1. pp. 72100.
Skinner, Quentin. 1978. The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. Cambridge.
Waldron, Jeremy. 2002. God, Locke, and Equality: Christian Foundations in Locke's Political Thought.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (UK). ISBN 978-0-521-89057-1.
Wijngaards, John, AMRUTHA. What the Pope's man found out about the Law of Nature, Author House
2011.
Wilson,James. 1967. The Works of James Wilson. Ed. Robert Green McCloskey. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press.
Woo, B. Hoon. 2012. "Pannenberg's Understanding of the Natural Law." Studies in Christian Ethics 25,
no. 3: 28890.
Zippelius, Reinhold. Rechtsphilosophie, 6th edition, 12. C.H. Beck, Munich, 2011. ISBN 978-3-406-
61191-9.
External links
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
The Natural Law Tradition in Ethics, by Mark Murphy, 2002.
Aquinas' Moral, Political, and Legal Philosophy, by John Finnis, 2005.
Natural Law Theories, by John Finnis, 2007.
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry 'Natural Law' by Kenneth Einar Himma
Aquinas on natural law
Natural Law explained, evaluated and applied A clear introduction to Natural Law
Jonathan Dolhenty, Ph.D., "An Overview of Natural Law"
Catholic Encyclopedia "Natural Law"
McElroy, Wendy "The Non-Absurdity of Natural Law", The Freeman, February 1998, Vol. 48, No. 2,
pp. 10811
John Wijngaards, "The controversy of Natural Law".
Lex Naturalis, Ius Naturalis: Law as Positive Reasoning and Natural Rationality by Eric Engle, (Elias
Clarke, 2010).
Wikiquote has quotations related to: Natural law
Wikiquote has quotations related to: Natural law
Law
[show]
Law
Metaphysics
[show]
Metaphysics
Jurisprudence
[show]
Jurisprudence
Authority control
Authority GND: 4041411-5

control NDL: 00571320
Categories
Categories:
Theories of law
Concepts in metaphysics
Thomas Aquinas
Ethical theories
Ethical schools and movements
Natural law
Theories in ancient Greek philosophy
Like Wikiwand? You will absolutely love BookAuthority!

BookAuthority: The Best Business Books Recommended By Industry
Leaders
Related topics
Human rights Human rights are moral principles or norms that describe certain standards of human behavior,
and are regularly protected as legal rights in municipal and international law. They are commonly understood as
inalienable fundamental rights "to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human
being," and which are "inherent in all human beings" regardless of their nation,... Nation state A nation state is a
geographical area that can be identified as deriving its political legitimacy from serving as a sovereign nation. A
state is a political and geopolitical entity, while a nation is a cultural and ethnic one. Transcendence (religion) In
religion, transcendence refers to the aspect of a god's nature and power which is wholly independent of the
material universe, beyond all physical laws. This is contrasted with immanence, where a god is said to be fully
present in the physical world and thus accessible to creatures in various ways.
This page is based on a Wikipedia article written by contributors (read/edit).
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
Cover photo is available under Public domain license. Credit: Carlo Crivelli (see original file).
Tell your friends about Wikiwand!
Gmail Facebook Twitter http://www.wikiwand.com/ Link
Home
About
Press
Site Map
Terms Of Service
Privacy Policy
Natural law
Introduction
History
1. Plato
2. Aristotle
3. Stoic natural law
4. Cicero
5. Christianity
6. English jurisprudence
7. American jurisprudence
8. Hobbes
9. Cumberland's rebuttal of Hobbes
10. Liberal natural law
11. Islamic natural law
Catholic natural law jurisprudence
Contemporary jurisprudence
See also
Notes
References
External links
Listen to this article

Natural Law

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Natural Law

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

7/11/2017 Natural law - Wikiwand

Society Positive law Human nature

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

See also: Treatise on Law

"Not of to-day or yesterday it is,

"Nay, but, an all-embracing law, through the realms of the sky

Stoic natural law

As the English historian A. J. Carlyle (18611943) notes:

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Cumberland's rebuttal of Hobbes

Liberal natural law

Dr Alberico Gentili, the founder of the science of international law.

Islamic natural law

Catholic natural law jurisprudence

See also: Treatise on Law and Determinatio

Albertus Magnus, O.P. (c. 12001280).

Thomas Aquinas (12251274).

The Catholic Church holds the view of natural law introduced

The Catholic Church understands human beings to consist of

The theological virtues are:

14. ^ Plato, The Republic, 428e9.

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Natural law

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Natural law

Authority GND: 4041411-5

Like Wikiwand? You will absolutely love BookAuthority!

Tell your friends about Wikiwand!

Gmail Facebook Twitter http://www.wikiwand.com/ Link

Listen to this article

You might also like