Alicea on The Natural Law Moment in Constitutional Theory @HarvardJLPP @CathULaw

 J. Joel Alicea, Catholic University of America School of Law, is publishing The Natural Law Moment in Constitutional Theory in volume 48 of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy (2024). Here is the abstract.

Something new is happening in American constitutional theory. Never before have so many legal scholars sought to ground constitutional theory in the natural-law tradition. Indeed, we can truly say that we are living through a natural-law moment in constitutional theory, a period of unprecedented interest in natural law among constitutional theorists. This immediately calls to mind three questions. First: how, if at all, are the theorists of this moment different from prior theorists who sought to ground constitutional theory in natural law? Second: what explains the rise of natural law in American constitutional theory? Third: what are the implications for constitutional theory of our natural-law moment? This essay sketches answers to these questions, with the caveat that much more could be said about them. This essay was originally delivered as the Herbert W. Vaughan Memorial Lecture at Harvard Law School on April 9, 2024.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.