Hence any theory of natural law as a set of transcendent and universal moral principles is inherently nonconservative. Mannheim, consequently, is quite right in identifying opposition to natural law as a distinguishing characteristic of conservatism. . . . On Burke's denial of natural law, see Alfred Cobban, Edmund Burke and the Revolt against the Eighteenth Century (London, 1929), pp. 40 ff., 75, and Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago, 1953), pp. 13-14 and 318-19, who makes the point that Burke differed from previous thinkers precisely in that he did not judge the British constitution by a standard transcending it. The efforts of contemporary publicists such as Russell Kirk to appear conservative and yet at the same time to espouse a universal natural law are manifestly inconsistent.
(Samuel P. Huntington, "Conservatism as an Ideology," The American Political Science Review 51 [June 1957]: 454-73, at 459 n. 6 [ellipsis added])
Note from KBJ: Huntington says that conservatism is inconsistent with natural law, which means that one cannot (logically) be both a conservative and a natural lawyer. That's a strong claim. I'm content with the weaker claim that conservatism is consistent with ethical subjectivism. Like David Hume, I'm both a political conservative and an ethical subjectivist. In my view, there are no objective moral values. We project our values onto the world; we do not discover them in the world.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 