Consent and natural law in Locke's philosophy
pp. 403-420
in: Enrico Pattaro, Damiano Canale, Hasso Hofmann, Patrick Riley (eds), A treatise of legal philosophy and general jurisprudence 9-10, Berlin, Springer, 2009Abstract
Locke is sometimes represented as a consent and social contract theorist (Locke 1967, 41, 324ff.) sometimes as a theorist of natural law (ibid., 287–94), sometimes as a theorist of natural rights, particularly natural property rights (ibid., 375–6). The problem is that all three characterizations are correct; the difficulty is to find an equilibrium between them so that none is discarded in the effort to define Locke's complete concept of right and law.
