ABSTRACT
PERHAPS it was too much to hope for. When Justice Thomas's reference to "natural law" surfaced as an issue in the early days of the confirrnation proceedings, there arose the possibility that the ensuing public controversy would demonstrate the contemporary importance of some of the traditional debates of analytic jurisprudence and would highlight the relationship between those debates and many of the pressing issues of constitutional law. But, alas, it was not to be. Even before Professor Hill's charges swamped these issues, it became clear that the public debate about natural law and its relationship to constitutional theory was likely to be as fruitful as a discussion of quantum physics on Larry King Live. Against the background noise of grinding axes, soundbites replaced analysis, inflammatory examples substituted for argument, and there was little concern about inconsistencies between the rhetoric deployed against Thomas and that deployed against Judge Bork only four years eatlier.
