Natural law

Natural law is the theory that moral and political principles can be discovered through human nature, reason, or both, rather than created solely by human institutions.

Moral realism: The view that at least some moral claims are true independently of anyone’s beliefs or conventions. Natural law treats moral principles as discoverable truths rather than mere social preferences.
Natural law theory of Thomas Aquinas: Thomas Aquinas’s account of moral law as rational participation in eternal law. It gives a systematic account of how reason identifies goods and derives moral precepts.
Sophocles’ Antigone: A Greek tragedy in which Antigone defies a ruler’s decree in favor of unwritten divine laws. Its conflict is an early dramatic expression of law higher than political enactment.
Legal positivism: The view that a law’s validity depends on social facts, not necessarily on its moral merits. It separates legal validity from the moral standards natural law applies to human enactments.
Declaration of Independence: The 1776 American political document announcing independence from Great Britain and stating principles of human equality and rights. Its appeal to self-evident truths and unalienable rights reflects natural-law language.
Practical reason: The capacity to reason about what to do and how to live. Natural-law arguments use practical reason to identify goods and guide action.
Basic goods: Fundamental aspects of human well-being treated as valuable for their own sake. Natural-law theorists use basic goods to explain why certain actions and choices matter morally.
Stoicism: An ancient philosophical tradition that emphasizes virtue, reason, and living according to nature. Stoic ideas helped frame law as a universal order accessible to human reason.
Legal realism: An approach that explains law through institutional practice and the behavior of legal officials. It shifts attention from universal moral principles to how law operates in practice.
John Locke: An English philosopher whose political writings defended natural rights and government by consent. Locke connected natural rights to limits on political authority and justified resistance to tyranny.

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