The Decline of Natural Law: How American Lawyers Once Used Natural Law and Why They Stopped

An account of a fundamental change in American legal thought, from a conception of law as something found in nature to one in which law is entirely a human creation.

Before the late 19th century, natural law played an important role in the American legal system. Lawyers routinely used it in their arguments and judges often relied upon it in their opinions. Today, by contrast, natural law plays virtually no role in the legal system. When natural law was part of a lawyer's toolkit, lawyers tho...