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Natural Law Theory (Contemporary)

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Introduction

Under the heading “contemporary theories of natural law,” we refer to a number of theories of law inspired by the traditional theory of natural law, and especially by Aquinas’ thought, but that substantially diverge from the neo-Thomist reading. The latter, which is nowadays represented by updated (McInerny 1997) or deeply renovated versions (Rhonheimer 2000), was characterized by a metaphysical foundation and by an account of the natural law as a theory of morals, which did not have any substantial impact on the field of jurisprudence, with few exceptions (for instance, Massini 2005). By contrast, not only the new theories of natural law relate themselves to contemporary moral and political philosophical debates (George 1992, 1996a), but most importantly they pretend to compete with the theories of legal positivism, claiming to provide a much better grasp of positive law, compared to the latter ones. In fact, they can be labeled as natural law theories of positive law or...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Università di Palermo, Palermo, Italy

    Francesco Viola

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  1. Francesco Viola
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Correspondence to Francesco Viola .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center for International & Comparative Law, University of Baltimore School of Law, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Mortimer Sellers

  2. Sozial- und Wirtschaftswissenschaften, University of Salzburg, Austria, Salzburg, Austria

    Stephan Kirste

Section Editor information

  1. Law, Università degli Studi di Genova, Genova, Italy

    Pierluigi Chiassoni

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Viola, F. (2021). Natural Law Theory (Contemporary). In: Sellers, M., Kirste, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6730-0_367-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6730-0_367-1

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