In Richard Dawkins' book "The God Delusion," he discusses some research that was conducted by Marc Hauser, the moral philosopher, in which Hauser discovers that people from varying cultures, when confronted with a hard moral choice, reach generally the same conclusions. There is the suggestion that morality is not religion based, or even culturally based, but rather a function of evolutionary biology.
If true, what does this say about the viability of a Natural Law theory of legal philosophy? For centuries, the legal status quo was justified as being so because God, or Nature, had decreed it. Then came the Positivists, who pointed out that the status quo is not self-justifying, and that the law should be viewed as something that humans create for themselves. Critical legal studies came along to add that the ruling elite who make the laws do so to protect their own privileged position, and that law is an instrument for oppression.
Hauser's research suggests that our laws are not purely social constructs, but are determined to an extent by biological instincts hard wired into the mind. Obviously this is something that will require more thought.
