Natural law is one of the most ancient concepts about which politicians, lawyers and philosophers "broke the spears", and even to this day this question has remained open. Although if you follow the development of this theory, you can see that, despite the resistance of opponents, it has almost conquered the sphere of international legal relations. First of all, it is interesting in that it arose even in the era of antiquity, and maybe even earlier, but became perceived as a special teaching much later. Finally, from the New Age, it has become one of two opposing theories in the field of jurisprudence.
Although the understanding that certain properties were given to man by nature really formed very early, in ancient Greece it served as a justification for slavery, since even the great Aristotle believed that a certain kind of people are slaves by nature, and therefore others who were lucky to be born free, must manage. Ancient Roman lawyers own the concept of “natural law” (or jus naturale), but in its definition they did not go beyond very abstract reasoning. In the Middle Ages, theories of natural and divine standards were combined, and therefore this term was mainly used by canonical scientists who developed the norms of church legislation, often based on political considerations.
On the other hand, in various sacred or mythological texts or moral maxims expressed in literary works or folk art, certain ideals were gradually formed about what truth, justice, equality, and so on are. They, too, were understood as a kind of natural law, since they acted as a measure of how a person should behave and what his dignity means. The new time became like a catalyst for this theory and proclaimed that there are obvious things given to people by nature - this is life, freedom, equality - and belonging to them by the very fact of birth. The philosophical ideas that raised these truths to the shield were put forward by Hugo Grotius and many thinkers of the Enlightenment, in particular, Holbach and Rousseau.
Natural law as a principle began to be enshrined in legislative acts, such as the revolutionary French Declaration of 1789 on "sacred natural rights" or the American Declaration of Independence. Although it should be clarified that the French revolutionaries, having written a sublime text about the inalienability of freedom and equality, excluded women from there, which subsequently gave rise to the suffrage movement. This is very indicative of the development of this theory, because even many of those who shared the position that certain privileges are an integral part of human nature, in practice, dealing with a society where different groups of people have opposite interests, justified those laws that protect the powers of the ruling people and classes. Therefore, in the XIX century, when this understanding of the structure of human society was realized, the concepts of natural and positive law began to openly oppose each other.
Defending the priority of the norms and ideals of laws "from nature", philosophers often based on the concept of good, not benefit. Natural law, both in its classical and in the modern sense, is a combination of such types of goods that cannot be reduced either to each other or to any other elements. Life, dignity, sociality, freedom, and other similar things and rules of conduct should be provided to a person in a complex so that he can live and not exist. One of them cannot be neglected for the sake of the other, because they "work" only in aggregate. They can not be taken away as a punishment or refuse any of them. Only then can good be achieved. The positive theory is based on “benefits”, that is, on the notion that one can sacrifice something for the sake of greater good or someone for the sake of general happiness.
From this follows the concept on which the natural rights of man rest, that is, the doctrine of powers given from birth. No authority gave him these privileges; he owes no one to them and should not thank anyone. Moreover, neither the state, nor the party leader, nor a group of people can deprive anyone of these opportunities, even in the most democratic way. Any alienation of such rights can be legally interpreted only as a violation of them, requiring restoration. As a matter of fact, the source of these natural powers lies in the concept of dignity, as Jean-Jacques Rousseau asserted, since this property itself is not such that is inherent in some people and absent in others, but a common social characteristic common to all members of the human race.