Contemporary defenders of the traditional natural Law approach might seek to mount a secular defense of Aquinas's notion that the purpose of law is to promote the common good. They may point out that what we understand as oppression and exploitation was understood by those who enacted slave laws as just and right.

Their point is not to endorse the relativist notion that something is made right by the simple fact that people think it is right. The traditional natural law view clearly rejects any such relativism in favor of the idea that there are objective moral truths.

Rather, their point is to suggest that in enacting laws people are trying to do what is right, however flawed their notions of right and wrong may be. If this is what people are trying to do, then we can still say that the purpose of law is to promote morality and justice. This is the human aim of law, regardless of whether it is God's aim as well.