natural law
natural lawThe ambiguity of the term natural law rests upon a metaphorical link between regularities in nature and the authoritative regulation of human activity. In its latter use, ‘natural law’ refers to principles of law and morality, supposedly universal in scope and binding on human conduct. In medieval Christian theology natural law was held to be a God-given system, but from the Reformation onwards, attempts were made to give natural law secular foundations in human nature and reason. In the Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes, for example, ‘laws of nature’ provide rational grounds for the social contract, and so for the establishment of political authority. Since the 18th century, legal theory has tended to be hostile to the notion of natural law—the conventional, socially and historically formed character of law being more commonly emphasized. However, the increase in moral authority attaching to human
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