Legal Obligation and the Natural Law

Abstract

This Article will for the most part assume, however, that we currently have at least an arbitrary preference to avoid such a result, if possible. But again, no narrowly circumscribed solution to the problem of justifying legal obligation seems possible. Rather, the narrowest possible affirmative solution to the problem of the moral character of legal obligation involves recourse to what is recognizably a natural law approach. Not just any recognizably natural law approach will suffice, however. If we are to solve the problem of legal obligation in an affirmative way, we are led inevitably to a single possible solution involving a distinctively, unmistakably, theistic version of the natural law. It is something of an under- statement to suggest that proving such a solution works is a task beyond the scope of this Article. But some effort will be expended on showing not merely that the choice really is as stark as we have supposed, but that the theistic natural law approach is susceptible of progressive development and not without contemporary plausibility and intellectual appeal.