The Institute is pleased to announce that it has recently added three new sections to its site on the history of natural law theory: sections on natural law in the thought of the Protestant Reformers and the sixteenth-century Anglican theologian Richard Hooker (whom John Locke quoted many times in his famous Second Treatise of Government), and on John Rawls as a critic of the natural law tradition. The Institute is very grateful to Dr. J. Daryl Charles, Prof. Robert Faulkner, and Prof. Christopher Wolfe, who contributed the essays on these topics. The site, Natural Law, Natural Rights, and American Constitutionalism (nlnrac.org) is maintained by the Witherspoon Institute to educate students, scholars, and the general public about the intellectual history of natural law theory, particularly as it relates to the history of the United States and its constitutional tradition. The site features foundational texts of the natural law tradition, along with original essays by contemporary scholars that explain the significance of various thinkers or schools of thought that have developed or criticized the theory of a law of nature. Accompanying study guides (under “educational materials”) help the reader explore the full depth of the site’s documents and essays.
