Origins of Natural Rights Language: Texts and Contexts, 1150–1250

Modern histories of natural rights theories usually place the origin of such doctrines in the late medieval or early modern periods; rights theories are commonly associated with the rise of nominalist philosophy or the beginnings of an entrepreneurial economy. In this paper I want to suggest that the humanistic jurisprudence of the twelfth century, especially the writings of the medieval Decretists, may provide a better starting point for investigating the origins of natural rights theories than either fourteenth-century nominalism or the nascent capitalism of the seventeenth century. 1