The relationship between natural laws and natural rights has many controversial subjects. While the tradition of natural law theory originated in ancient Greece, they usually consider the concept of natural rights the product of the modern civil-polit...
The relationship between natural laws and natural rights has many controversial subjects. While the tradition of natural law theory originated in ancient Greece, they usually consider the concept of natural rights the product of the modern civil-political revolutions. Among the researchers on natural law theory, some assume that natural right is a product of the political Revolutions of the 17th and 18th century. The medieval historians who agreed on natural rights before the modern Revolutions are divided again over the interpretation of William of Ockham and St. Thomas Aquinas. Some assert that Ockham has a subjective concept of rights, and studies of natural law in jurisprudence widely accept that Ockham discarded natural law and natural law theory. Whether St. Aquinas used modernized natural rights is controversial too. M. Villey denies it, but J.
Finnis affirms in some conditions. This article discusses issues regarding the relationship between natural law and natural rights. Firstly, this article asserted that M. Villey’s natural law reasoning rightly criticizes the subjective rights-centered approach of lawyers nowadays. Secondly, it reviewed the conventional understanding that William of Ockham denied natural law theory and traditions and argued for the need for further research on William of Ockham and his natural rights. Thirdly, it argued that Finnis was wrong in interpreting ius as synonymous with rights and understanding both as interchangeable in St. Thomas Aquinas’s writings, but because by a notion of the natural order, ius and rights are common in principles and pursue the same purpose and in that case, it accepted Finnis’s interpretation.