Is Natural Law Theory of Any Use in Constitutional Interpretation

Debate over the methodology of constitutional adjudication has in recent years been vigorous. Whether that debate has been fruitful is, however, open to serious doubt. Particularly within, as Professor Robin West has described it, our "fractured, relativist, nihilist, minimally pluralist moral climate," it is not surprising that some of the most popular approaches to constitutional interpretation tend to ratify, as much as they definitively resolve, conflicts in interpretive methodologies. When we add in the academic bias in favor of methodological novelty, as against mere subscription to the methodologically familiar, prospects for reaching consensus on constitutional methodology become even more remote