Natural Law

A law above all human laws, written into the structure of the cosmos itself. The Stoics said reason is that law.

Cicero argued that true law is right reason in agreement with nature. It is universal, unchanging, and eternal. No legislature can repeal it. This idea, that there exists a standard of justice higher than any state's decree, passed from the Stoics through Cicero into Roman jurisprudence, then into Christian theology, then into the Enlightenment's declarations of rights. Every appeal to human rights descends from this Stoic insight.