The categories of law play an essential part in the elaboration of the concept of the modern state. From the 17^th century society is perceived to be the product of the free will of its citizens, as expressed in their consent to the social contract. Contract thus becomes the conceptual foundation of state power. This sets the modern state apart from the societies of the Middle Ages in which civil authority was either seen to be founded in religion (Christian doctrine) or in custom (Roman law). In the age of the modern state, it is law, or rather, constitutional doctrine that serves as the medium in which human freedom is translated into civil authority. The system of this translation is natural law.

The dissertation traces the genesis and the disintegration of the tradition of modern natural law in the period from the 17^th to the 19^th century. It shows how the format of 20^th century legal thought arises out of the ruins of natural law and it argues that, even as 20^th century legal thought has distanced itself from natural law, it has not ceased to return to its fundamental problem: the problem of the foundation of power.