ABSTRACT
Natural law has always had a way, then, of creeping into Western legal action. It may do so under other names, only to be challenged at every turn, and evade easy generalization. This chapter looks at the particular ways in which natural law thinking appears to be present in the judgments of members of the contemporary US Supreme Court. Generally speaking, there are three main types of natural law: one based on the natural sciences or the perceived laws of the human psyche or marketplace, one derived from divine injunction, commonly inscribed in sacred text, and one grounded in a set of discernible moral propositions that are not necessarily linked to a specific religious or scientific doctrine. Natural law in the Western theological context generally refers to those principles God is said to have fixed in the natural world, and which can be discerned by human reason.
