Getting Normative: The Role of Natural Rights in Constitutional Adjudication

Abstract

We are in the midst of a natural law revival. Not since the Hart-Fuller debate2 in the wake of Nuremberg has legal academia witnessed such interest in the topics of natural law and natural rights.3 While this development may be only the most recent aspect of the now several decades old revival of normative legal philosophy that I chronicled some ten years ago,4 the immediate cause of this interest was, of course, the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court of the United States. The