Weekly Topic: How Natural is Natural Law?

Accounts of Traditional Natural Law usually either succeed or fail due to their ability to convince people that there is a moral order to the universe that corresponds to the natural order we observe around us. Because we observe wide disparities between the laws of different communities and because "natural" phenomena like gravity, the ferocity of wild animals and even the inevitably of human greed do not need explicitly formulated legal prescriptions or sanctions to encourage conformity, individuals often feel law to be a burden imposed upon them by sinister authorities. Consequently, the Natural Law theorist often turns to a theological or otherwise metaphysical account of the universe to show that law is not originally or even primarily produced by human beings seeking some advantage over others, but that it is a consequence of nature itself.

Do Natural Law theorists need to ground their views about the moral content of law in theological or metaphysical accounts of the universe? What does this strategy provide that others might lack? What might be some dangers of this approach? Lastly, does the attempt to hold the law to a universal and unchanging set of moral standards imply a fundamentally "religious" attitude?