UNDERSTANDING ABOUT NATURAL LAW TO THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY

Natural law theories also provide an account of legitimate authority and the
responsibility to observe the law that avoids some of the well-known and seemingly
intractable challenges associated with establishing legitimate power on the basis of
actual or hypothetical agreement. Beginning with early modern social contract theorists
such as Pufendorf, Hobbes, and Locke and continuing into the contemporary period,
most notably with John Rawls' hypothetical contract theory proposed in a Theory of
Justice, there is an assumption that being a part of an authoritative community – a
community with some degree of decision-making power over its members – is
fundamentally unnatural to Huma.
For authoritative communities to exist legitimately (rather than merely on the basis of
brute force), they must be based upon the consent of their members, who are
understood as free and equal individuals subject to no PR consensual authority
structures.

ARAGO, MICHAELA JOY D.