Orator of the Roman Republic, founder of the "natural law" tradition
The greatest orator, statesman, and legal thinker of the late Roman Republic. He defended the republic all his life, opposing the threat of dictatorship with a mighty pen and torrential eloquence. He held that above the laws made by men there is a "natural law," universal and unchanging, springing from human reason and justice — an idea passed down through the Middle Ages to become the source of modern human rights, constitutionalism, and international law. After Caesar’s murder, for opposing Antony, he was put on the proscription list and killed, his head displayed in public — the eloquent voice of the republic fell silent with him.
Cicero wrote that true law is right reason in accord with nature, universal and eternal; any human law that contradicts it is no true law at all. This notion that "above man-made law stands natural law" became, for two thousand years, the most powerful weapon by which people opposed tyranny and asserted inborn human rights.
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