Bernard Mauser was, as of May 2011, a candidate for a Ph.D. in philosophy from Marquette University. I've read bits and pieces of his dissertation online. It has the forbidding title, "The Ontological Foundations for Natural Law Theory and Contemporary Ethical Naturalism." Natural-law theory, to put matters starkly, is the whole body of theory that holds that there is such a fact as "human nature," and that human nature is normative. Understanding our own nature tells us how we ought to live. Natural-law theory may be theistic. That is, one may couple the "laws of nature" with "Nature's God" as Thomas Jefferson did. But natural-law theory need not be theistic, and Mauser cites Larry Arnhart as an example of a philosopher who invokes the laws of nature while keeping nature's God out of the account. At any rate, natural-law theory is certainly realist and cognitivist. It necessarily contends that good and bad are objective (...