Linked from

The 69 pages that link to Natural law, each with the reason it gives.

• Rule of lawCompared with: It raises a different question: whether unjust enacted laws deserve recognition as law.

• John LockeRelated: Locke uses natural law to explain rights and limits on political power.

• Thomas AquinasBroader topic: Aquinas develops natural law as rational participation in eternal law.

• StoicismRelated: Stoic cosmopolitanism and rational law fed directly into Roman legal theory and beyond.

• CiceroRelated: Cicero’s account of universal right influenced later arguments about law and political obligation.

• International lawCompared with: It offers a rival account of legal authority and informs arguments about universal obligations.

• ShariaCompared with: It grounds moral authority differently from Sharia’s appeal to divine guidance.

• Legal positivismCompared with: It challenges positivism by giving morality a constitutive role in law.

• Christian ethicsRelated: Christian thinkers use it to explain moral duties accessible beyond explicit biblical commands.

• Natural rightsRelated: Natural rights are often treated as individual entitlements grounded in natural law.

• Jeremy BenthamCompared with: Bentham rejected natural rights as fictitious abstractions rather than sound foundations for legislation.

• Legal realismCompared with: Realism redirects attention from law’s moral foundations to its institutional operation.

• Sexual ethicsCompared with: Its account of sexuality can conflict with ethics centered on consent and individual choice.

• Bartolomé de las CasasRelated: Las Casas used natural-law reasoning to argue that Indigenous peoples possessed rights and political authority.

• Customary lawCompared with: Natural law grounds legal authority in moral principles rather than established practice.

• Hugo GrotiusNarrower topic: Grotius grounded rules between states in principles he believed reason could establish.

• French EnlightenmentRelated: It supplied grounds for judging laws and institutions against standards beyond custom.

• Ten CommandmentsCompared with: It contrasts divine-command authority with accounts of moral obligations discoverable through reason.

• DaoCompared with: Dao is not simply a law imposed on nature; it also names nature's unfolding way.

• Catholic theologyRelated: Catholic moral theology uses it to explain duties accessible to reason beyond revealed commands.

• Philo of AlexandriaRelated: Philo links the Mosaic law with universal moral order and rational principles.

• State of natureRelated: For Locke, natural law constrains conduct even before a government exists.

• JurisprudenceRelated: It challenges the idea that legal validity can be wholly independent of morality.

• ThomismRelated: Aquinas connects moral obligation to human nature and rational participation in divine law.

• Critical legal studiesCompared with: Its appeal to objective legal standards conflicts with the movement’s critique of neutrality.

• Moral universalismRelated: It offers a historical account of moral rules whose authority crosses political boundaries.

• Age of EnlightenmentRelated: It offered a way to judge political authority by standards beyond inherited custom.

• Francisco de VitoriaRelated: Vitoria used natural law to assess the rights of Indigenous peoples and the limits of political power.

• Islamic ethicsCompared with: It provides a comparison for debates about reason, revelation, and moral knowledge.

• Christian philosophyRelated: Christian natural-law traditions connect moral reasoning to creation and an intelligible divine order.

• Divine revelationRelated: Some traditions connect moral knowledge from nature with broader forms of divine disclosure.

• Hans KelsenCompared with: Kelsen rejected using moral validity as the test for whether a norm belongs to a legal system.

• Law (legal system)Compared with: It challenges the idea that legal validity can be separated from moral standards.

• Sexual moralityRelated: Natural-law arguments often judge sexual acts by their purposes and perceived natural ends.

• AntigoneRelated: The tragedy invites comparison between enduring moral duties and a ruler’s command.

• H. L. A. HartCompared with: Hart separates legal validity from moral merit while allowing law and morality to overlap.

• Religious ethicsRelated: Religious natural-law traditions connect moral claims to both reason and divine creation.

• Scientific lawCompared with: The phrase can mean a moral principle, unlike a scientific law describing nature.

• FusionismRelated: It offers a shared moral framework for defending both personal freedom and virtue.

• Jewish ethicsCompared with: It offers a different account of moral authority from obligations grounded in revelation and tradition.

• Jacques MaritainRelated: Maritain used natural law to explain universal moral claims across religious and political differences.

• LeviathanRelated: Hobbes recasts natural law as rational guidance toward peace and self-preservation.

• Marquis de SadeCompared with: His characters invoke nature to justify conduct that natural-law ethics would condemn.

• ZiranCompared with: Ziran describes spontaneous self-so-ness, not a universal code prescribing human conduct.

• Jean BodinRelated: Bodin treated natural law as a limit sovereign rulers could not legitimately violate.

• Private lawCompared with: It contrasts source-based accounts with claims that private rights have moral foundations.

• Traditionalist conservatismRelated: Some traditionalists appeal to moral standards they regard as prior to political authority.

• Modern philosophyRelated: It offered a rational basis for morality and political authority beyond inherited custom.

• Natural justiceCompared with: Despite the shared word, natural law is a theory of legal authority, not a hearing rule.

• PaleolibertarianismRelated: Rothbard used natural-rights reasoning to support both individual liberty and traditional moral claims.