The purpose of the Snickers bar example was to highlight to you that the right to life trumps even for a thief at some point. How did you miss this? The challenge was for you, as an Enlightened proponent of Natural Law, to tell me, an unenlightened heathen, where exactly the thief's act may justifiably allow me to kill him. Where is the cut-off point? If not a Snickers bar, where?

Just like I said above. Natural Law is a disingenuous argument. Predictably, my questions put you in the place you didn't want to be. So, rather than deal with them head-on, you criticized them and ducked giving an answer.

You can say "No thanks" all you want, but natural law, whatever it is, has never been practiced on this planet. Think about it. How can you practice Natural Law if you can't even answer questions like those and if you can't write them down in a set of statutes everyone can resort to?

Those who claim to know Natural Law but refuse to let us unenlightened heathens in on the secret are, themselves. likely to be the types of judges who'd operate completely on a whim. They resort to "unseen" laws like wizards, while real judges resort to statutes and precedent that everyone else gets to read. I'll stick to that process. It is more open and honest, as flawed as it might be.

No thanks. I'll stick w/Enlightenment philosophy (upon which the Constitution is derived) and Bastiat (among others). The law is to be applied to all, not based on a judges whims. This becomes legislating and that authority has been given to Congress.

The remainder of your examples are extreme, go beyond reason, and distort the natural law principles…"kill in defense of a Snickers bar." Come on. Who is advocating such things in the name of natural law?

Eliminate force and fraud in the realm of life, liberty, and estate. That is what Government legitimately should do.

Privileges and immunities honestly should not happen under constitutions that are supposed to protect rights, but then the American tradition is to pay lip service to rights such as starting off state constitutions as being to protect rights, but then to immediately start carving out exceptions and giving legislatures authority to violate rights. Roads, education, what have one, should always be left to the people, and government only existing to protect the choices of people. However, people are corrupt and seek to gain advantage over others, so we fight more or less bloodless battles through government.

Its source derives from law-makers, and its legitimacy relies on its acceptance by the public.

Contrary to advocates of Natural Law, Legal Realists asserted that "the law" is whatever men with requisite power say it is.

It is okay to believe the law "ought" to be different than it currently is, but that begs the question. Natural law, at best, is only an appeal to a sense of greater fairness – i.e., an appeal to reason to attempt to explain how positive laws are unfair.

For this "appeal" to Natural Law to have any effect, its proponents must enact it into Positive Law. Otherwise, all it describes is "what our Positive Laws are not."

The gist is that Natural Law proponents do not readily see that they are espousing the ball and clam shell game. They are not competent enough to consent with each other as to what this unseen "treatise" actually says with respect to all the multi-faceted issues that complete rule-making entails.

This is why the Natural Law concept of preservation of life conflicts with the concept of war, self-defense, etc. Where does one concept give way to the other? If Natural Law demands preservation of life, liberty and property, then, we must ask, "Is it permitted to kill in defense of my property right in a Snickers bar?" "If not for a Snickers bar, how about a television set?" "If not for a television set, how about a car?"

From questions like these, all such concepts of Natural Law devolve into splinters galore, and thus, we find ourselves where the Legal Realists already knew we were…. in our present legal system. Thus, when the Natural Law proponents wrestle in the all the murkiness of infinitely competing principles, they ultimately, through whatever general consensus they could possibly muster, will do no better than the Positive Law as it exists today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_realism

Please enlighten us with your idea concerning the basis of law.

Take Thomas Hobbes, who tried to come up with 19 such laws. The first was:

The first Law of nature is that every man ought to endeavour peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek and use all helps and advantages of war.

Could he have been serious? "as far as he has hope?" So, in order to not violate this law, when should we know that hope has really run out? Further, on what terms must hope be extended? "Well, hope just ran out that they will consent to give us their oil for free."

Not to mention it doesn't address long-accepted concepts of excessive force in connection with self-defense.

Those guys were smart for the times, but humans have become far more intelligent over the years.

As such, the concept of the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and estate (from Locke primarily) as the center of natural law naturally became the center of the construct of American governance. This is why we still see it being referenced in the 1860s and even today. Government is instituted to protect these three primary natural rights according to our model of government based on natural law. Therefore, one's physical or intellectual property was to be protected by government. Thus, a patent, for a period of time, may be granted (privilege) by a government. This is where privileges and immunities come from. Privileges and immunities are not inalienable like life and liberty, they are legislated rights. (Note: I personally see a fault that the pursuit of happiness (estate) is inalienable because property can be given away or taken, under certain circumstances, with out one violating someone else's natural rights),

We can debate whether natural law and God and aliens are real, but the fact that the drafters of the foundational documents, and many, many Amendments and laws, held natural law as a central part of our republic and political system. Of course natural law (as explained by Locke) is a leap of faith because to fully embrace it and understand it, one must accept that their is a higher power than the individual and that the individual has been given not only rights but responsibilities while on this Earth.

Otherwise, we are left to the law of the jungle.

There are good arguments to be made in favor of granting patents, but the suggestion that natural law is one of them is weak.

I think history demonstrates that laws emanate from choices made when considering competing policies. Reliance on natural law as an argument is disingenuous. It avoids honest debate, and just like religion, is a mechanism where people claim insight into something they cannot demonstrate. It is a concept as bogus as the Tooth Fairy. But if the Tooth Fairy is what it takes to console a person after the loss of a tooth, then, "whatever makes him happy."

Nobody has ever produced the complete set of bound volumes referred to as "Natural Law." So, whoever claims to know its contents professes knowledge of a grand secret – which translates into a leap of faith. This person apparently has greater insight into the way the world should be than does his listener. For me, that's a pretty hard sale.