Submissions
For Authors
Original work in the natural law tradition across philosophy, theology, and jurisprudence.
The Journal of Natural Law publishes original work across philosophy, theology, and jurisprudence in the natural law tradition. If your manuscript is ready, you can begin now.
What we publish
We welcome original work on every aspect of the natural law tradition: its historical development, its contemporary deployment, its theoretical problems, and its application to particular domains such as jurisprudence, bioethics, and the environment, among many others.
- Articles. Major scholarship, with a preference for manuscripts under eight thousand words.
- Invited peer responses. Replies of about 1,500 words, written at the editor’s invitation and published alongside the article they engage. Submit them through the personal link in your invitation, which shows your deadline; a reminder follows three days before it.
- Responses and comments. Unsolicited replies to work the journal has published.
- Discussion notes. Shorter interventions on a focused point.
- Book reviews. Reviews of recent and significant works, by invitation; proposals are welcome by email.
- Case studies. For the standing section on casuistry. Cases under 800 words, with responses up to 2,000 words.
Before you submit
A little preparation keeps your submission moving. Work through this short checklist:
- Submit a Word document, anonymized for blind review.
- Include an abstract of 150 words or fewer.
- Supply three to six keywords.
- Citations follow Chicago author-date style, though manuscripts may be submitted in any consistent format.
- If you used AI, include an AI declaration citing which tool was used and how, in an acknowledgment section located prior to the list of works cited.
- Confirm the work is original, in English, and not under review elsewhere.
Send us your work
Submissions go through the journal’s online form. It asks for the corresponding author’s details, a few declarations about originality and prior review, your acceptance of the AI policy with a disclosure of any AI use, and the manuscript file itself. The form takes a few minutes.
After you submit
You will receive an acknowledgment email as soon as your submission arrives. The editor first reads every manuscript for fit and readiness; work that passes screening goes to peer review.
Articles are reviewed double-anonymized; responses, notes, and case studies are reviewed single-anonymized. Reviewers are asked to return their reports within three months.
Decisions and reviewer reports arrive by email. A private link, sent to you directly, lets you check progress and upload revisions; there is no public status page to monitor.
From acceptance to print
Once your work is accepted, three things follow:
- You sign a publishing agreement and complete the copyright paperwork.
- You review proofs of your article before it goes to press.
- Your work is published by CUA Press and hosted in full on Project MUSE.
The detail, in full
Everything summarized above is set out completely on its own page:
- Author Guidelines — manuscript preparation, formatting, and submission requirements.
- Submit a Manuscript — the online submission form.
- Peer Review — how articles, responses, and case studies are reviewed.
- Publication Ethics — authorship, originality, conflicts of interest, and the complaints policy.
- AI Policy — how AI tools may permissibly be used by authors, referees, and editors.
- Reviewer Guidelines — for those invited to review for the journal.