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The idea of Natural Law held sway over mankind for more than two millennia. "Controversies in Natural Law" centres around two competing visions: Natural Law as human reason versus Natural Law as God´s command,going back respectively to the Stoic and Old Testament ideas of law. The early Church Fathers had assimilated both visions in their Natural Law vision of man as created with reason in God´s image. So man had Natural Law implanted into him originally, but after the Fall he needed to be reminded of it by the written Law. The tension between the ideas of law as human reason and law as God´s command became manifest during the Scholastic controversy on God´s Free Will. The upshot of the Scholastic debates was the notion of Natural Right due to the original "dominium" given to man as made with reason in God´s image. The demise of Scholasticism did not bring the demise of Natural Law. The early modern visions of Natural Law and Natural Right remained rooted in the same premises going back to the early Fathers. The book would be of stimulus and use for all interested in the history of ideas, as well as scholars of legal philosophy.

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Dr Anna Taitslin received her first PhD on the history of economic thought from the Institute of Economics of Russian Academy of Science (Moscow) in 1994. In 2004 she received her second PhD on the history of Natural Law from the University of Tasmania. Dr Taitslin is currently working at the Law Faculty of the University of Canberra.

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