natural law

noun

Definition of natural law

: a body of law or a specific principle held to be derived from nature and binding upon human society in the absence of or in addition to positive law

Recent Examples of natural law from the Web

And on Friday, parents began that act that inverts the natural law of the universe: burying their own children.

— TIME.com, "TIME Health," 17 Feb. 2018
For some, this is merely to repeat a subtle suggestion that what is feminine is particular, while what is masculine is universal and, by extension, the natural law of the land.

— james mcauley, Washington Post, "Gatekeepers say gender-neutral pronouns pose ‘deadly danger’ for the French language," 27 Oct. 2017
Economists and businesspeople have played a leading role in the death spiral’s transition to metaphor, converting the individual danger pilots faced into a shorthand for market forces endowed with the inevitability of natural law.

— toni wall jaudon, The Atlantic, "How to Escape a Death Spiral," 6 Oct. 2017
Relativism prevails, the rules of natural law evaporate, and evil takes root.

— kathryn jean lopez, National Review, "Why the Rosary, Why Now?," 30 Sep. 2017
Love for one another, across difference, is the only natural law here.

— tmerrigan, Longreads, "A Short Distance from Southie, but a World Away," 25 Sep. 2017
But some of the same natural laws apply to both situations, meaning crowd researchers have had success in using similar models to study crowds as physicists use to study particle flow.

— evelyn lamb, Smithsonian, "How Fluid Dynamics Can Help You Navigate Crowds," 17 Jan. 2017

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'natural law.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

First Known Use of natural law

15th century

in the meaning defined above

See Words from the same year

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Law Dictionary

natural law

noun

legal Definition of natural law

: a body of law or a specific principle of law that is held to be derived from nature and binding upon human society in the absence of or in addition to positive law

Note: While natural law, based on a notion of timeless order, does not receive as much credence as it did formerly, it was an important influence on the enumeration of natural rights by Thomas Jefferson and others.