The theory of natural law grounds human laws in the universal truths of God’s creation. Until very recently, lawyers in the Western tradition studied natural law as part of their training, and the task of the judicial system was to put its tenets into concrete form, building an edifice of positive law on natural law’s foundations. Although much has been written about natural law in theory, surprisingly little has been said about how it has shaped legal practice. Natural Law in Court asks how lawyers and judges made and interpreted natural law arguments in England, Europe, and the United States, from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the American Civil War. R. H. Helmholz sees a remarkable consistency in how English, Continental, and early American jurisprudence understood and applied natural law in cases ranging from family law and inheritance to criminal and commercial law. Despite differences in their judicial systems, natural law was treated across the board as the source of positive law, not its rival. The idea that no person should be condemned without a day in court, or that penalties should be proportional to the crime committed, or that self-preservation confers the right to protect oneself against attacks are valuable legal rules that originate in natural law. From a historical perspective, Helmholz concludes, natural law has advanced the cause of justice.

The law of nature -- The common law -- The adoption of written constitutions -- The separation of law and religion -- The explosion in law publishing -- The two-sidedness of natural law -- The decline of natural law and custom --Substitutes for natural law -- Echoes of natural law.

Presents an ambitious narrative and fresh re-assessment of common law and natural law's varied interactions in America, 1630 to 1930.

This text presents cutting edge contemporary materials, as well as new chapters on Natural Law, Positivism, Gay Legal Rights and Critical Lawyering. The book offers comprehensive coverage of legal theory from traditional to current movements, including new materials on Legal Formalism, Legal Process, Latino Critical, and Queer Critical Theory. Also contains extensive readings and updated and amplified notes, questions, problems, and bibliographies.

In Ministers of the Law Jean Porter articulates a theory of legal authority derived from the natural law tradition. As she points out, the legal authority of most traditions rests on their own internal structures, independent of extralegal considerations -- legal houses built on sand, as it were. Natural law tradition, on the other hand, offers a basis for legal authority that goes beyond mere arbitrary commands or social conventions, offering some extralegal authority without compromising the independence and integrity of the law. Yet Porter does more in this volume than simply discuss historical and theoretical realms of natural law. She carries the theory into application to contemporary legal issues, bringing objective normative structures to contemporary Western societies suspicious of such concepts.

Since America's founding, natural law principles play a critical role in the development of rights and human dignity. Commencing with the notion that rights are derived from a higher, metaphysical power over mere promulgation and human legislation, the natural law advocate sees law and human rights in the context of a more perpetual and perennial philosophy. Coupled with this is the view that natural law provides a series of undeniable precepts for human operations or a natural prescription for human life based on the natural order. Hence early court cases tend to emphasize the "natural" versus the unnatural and just as compellingly argue that the natural order, aligned with the eternal law, delivers a measure for human action. Earlier US Supreme Court cases often use this sort of language in granting or denying rights in certain human activity. As a result, a survey of some of the most significant landmark cases from the Supreme Court are assessed in Natural Law Jurisprudence in U.S. Supreme Court Cases since "Roe v. Wade" and, by implication, those cases which seem to disregard these fundamental principles, such as the slavery decisions, are highlighted.

Is there such a thing as an objective law of morality? Natural law theorists maintain that there is, and Natural Law probes the history and implications of this powerful concept. Tracing the development of natural law from ancient times to the present, the book also examines the leading figures, transitions, and turning points in the idea's evolution, and brings a natural law approach to contemporary issues such as abortion, homosexuality, and assisted suicide.