A thematic collection of the “Archive of Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy”. Texts on natural law – the oldest tradition of legal philosophy – and its contemporary readings. All articles are available free of charge in open access.
The natural law tradition
Natural law is the conviction that above positive law there is a normative order which human beings do not create but discover – an order that provides a measure of evaluation and, on some accounts, a condition of the validity of enacted law. The tradition runs from the Stoics and Thomas Aquinas, through the rationalist schools of Grotius and the Enlightenment, to its twentieth-century revival in response to the experience of lawlessness – from the Radbruch formula to John Finnis’s new natural law theory.
Selected texts
- Problem państwa doskonałego w perspektywie Pascalowskich rozważań o prawie i sprawiedliwości – Edyta Godziszewska, No. 2(47)/2026 (in Polish)
- Prawo naturalne w ramach radykalnego oświecenia – Michał Wendland, No. 4(25)/2020 (in Polish)
- Rozumowanie prawnicze jako rozumowanie praktyczne w świetle nowej teorii prawa naturalnego Johna M. Finnisa – Michał Sopiński, No. 1(21)/2020 (in Polish)
See also
Law and Morality · Classics of Modern Legal Philosophy and Theory. Profiles: John Finnis · Gustav Radbruch.
For authors
The “Archive” publishes articles in legal theory and philosophy – including the natural law tradition – in Polish and English, in open access with no publication charges and with double-blind peer review. The journal is indexed in Scopus, DOAJ and ERIH PLUS (100 points on the Polish ministerial list). See the guidelines for authors.
An editorial collection, to be extended as older texts are tagged. Last updated: July 2026.