This impressive volume is the first attempt to look at the intertwined histories of jurisprudence and science in early modern Europe. Taking an interdisciplinary approach these articles stimulate new debate in the areas of intellectual history and the history of philosophy, as well as the natural and human sciences in general.

Introduction; 1: From Limits to Laws: The Construction of the Nomological Image of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy; 2: Expressing Nature's Regularities and their Determinations in the Late Renaissance; 3: The Legitimation of Law through God, Tradition, Will, Nature and Constitution; 4: The Concept of (Natural) Law in the Doctrine of Law and Natural Law of the Early Modern Era; 5: ‘Lex certa' and ‘ius certum': The Search for Legal Certainty and Security; 6: Crimen contra naturam; 7: Nature's Regularity in Some Protestant Natural Philosophy Textbooks 1530–1630; 8: Natural Order and Divine Salvation: Protestant Conceptions in Early Modern Germany (1550–1750); 9: Natural Law and Celestial Regularities from Copernicus to Kepler; 10: The Approach to a Physical Concept of Law in the Early Modern Period: A Comparison between Matthias Bernegger and Richard Cumberland; 11: Leibniz's Concept of jus naturale and lex naturalis — defined ‘with geometric certainty'; 12: Controversies on Nature as Universal Legality (1680–1710); 13: From Principles to Regularities: Tracing ‘Laws of Nature' in Early Modern France and England; 14: Unruly Weather: Natural Law Confronts Natural Variability; 15: In Search of the Newton of the Moral World: The Intelligibility of Society and the Naturalist Model of Law from the End of the Seventeenth Century to the Middle of the Eighteenth Century; 16: Deus legislator

’The book is worth reading in its entirety; it has far more internal coherence than most edited collections. The authors have all read each others’ contributions and each essay is peppered with references to the others, allowing the reader to follow common themes throughout. This collection of essays will provide useful insights as well as a stimulus to further research for a broad range of scholars interested in the intellectual and cultural history of early modern and Enlightenment Europe.’ Renaissance Quarterly ’Lorraine Daston and Michael Stolleis have brought together sixteen scholars (including themselves) from the history of science and the history of jurisprudence, and they have compiled a collection of essays of the highest standards. Natural Law and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Europe should certainly provide the starting point for all future work in the area.’ British Journal for the History of Science