Frederik Stang was one of the leading Norwegian politicians in the 19th century. He was a minister in the government for about 30 years (1846–1856 and 1861–1880), and in 1873 he became prime minister of Norway. As a politician, Stang carried through a number of modernizing reforms in fields such as communication and transport, trade and economy, and agriculture.

Stang was thus first and foremost a political figure, but early in his career, he held a position as lecturer and associate professor at the faculty of law at the Royal Frederick University in Christiania (today Oslo) between 1830 and 1835. He was appointed one year after his graduation in law from the same university (1828). During his university years, he gave lectures in the law of persons, constitutional law, property law, Roman law, and natural law. The natural law lectures were held over three semesters, from the spring of 1830 until the spring of 1831. Stang left the university in 1835 to become a barrister, before he got involved in politics from the 1840s and onwards.

Stang belonged to a prominent and influential generation born around 1805–1810. This was the first generation to be raised in the aftermath of 1814, when Norway had become independent from Denmark, with a liberal constitution, a democratic parliament and other national institutions. The country could maintain these institutions despite the union with Sweden from 1814 until 1905. When this generation entered the public scene around 1830, they criticized the current state of affairs in Norway and propagated reforms in the fields of politics, education and science, economy and culture. A major ambition was to create an active and enterprising government led by an educated elite. In Stang's natural law lectures, this spirit of an active and reformatory state is also present. Stang and his generation rose to power during the 1830's and 1840's and were the driving force in the heyday of what is usually referred to as the "civil servants' state" (1814–1884).

Stang's natural law lectures are some of the most important sources when tracing the development of the discipline in Norway around the mid-nineteenth century.

Stang never published a work on natural law, but several handwritten records from his 1830/1831 lectures circulated among students and were used presumably until 1870. Today, at least 12 manuscripts are preserved, which not only indicates an extensive use but also a need among the students for materials that could prepare them for exams where natural law (i.e. "the general doctrine of law") was among the examination subjects. Because no Norwegian textbook existed at the time, the students had to resort to the textbook Naturrettens eller den almindelige Retslæres Grundsætninger (The principles of natural law or the general doctrine of law) written by the Danish professor of law Johan Frederik Wilhelm Schlegel in 1805. This book was, however, based on Kant's natural law, a strand of thought that had become contested in Norway around 1830. Stang's natural law idea was an attempt to provide an alternative to Kant.

Stang’s lectures, which were published in 2023, contain a general introduction, a part on private natural law and a part on public natural law. They are comprehensive and deal with the most important fields of law, including property law, contract law, family law, criminal law, and state law (international law, however, is only touched upon very briefly at the end).

During his lifetime, Stang only published one legal scientific treatise, Systematisk Fremstilling af Kongeriget Norges constitutionelle eller grundlovbestemte Ret (Systematic Exposition of the Constitutional or Constitution-based Law of the Kingdom of Norway) from 1833. In the introductory part of this work, Stang argued that natural law could have a certain relevance for the interpretation of the constitution, but within a rather narrow scope. Of interest is Stang's view that the constitution could not be construed as a contract between the people and the king, with the important consequence that the king would not have a veto in relation to constitutional amendments. Although Stang did not refer explicitly to natural law in his reasoning, it seems clear that his position on the matter was based on the same rejection of social contract theories, as the one we find in his natural law lectures.

Two features stand out in the introductory part of Stang's lectures. First, he employs a certain kind of a dialectical method, in the sense that he distinguishes between unity and plurality, the general and the particular, the immutable and the mutable – but the “reality” dialectically combines these opposing aspects in an “absolute unity”. Second, he repeatedly refers to the “ethical idea” or the “ethical main purpose” (Danish: “Sædelighed”, German: “Sittlichkeit”). One example of this is the concept of law, which according to Stang should encompass “everything that can be achieved with external force and that in general can promote the ethical main purpose”. Within this dual framework, Stang stresses the need for law to be positive, as it is only positive law that can give concrete reality to the objective ethical idea. In light of these features, a question is whether there is a possible influence from Hegel’s legal philosophy. We know that Stang borrowed Hegel’s Wissenschaft der Logik and his Phänomenologie des Geistes from the library in August 1830, that people in the circle around Stang showed an interest in Hegel's legal philosophy, and that at least one passage in his lectures is copied from § 3 in Hegels' Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts. At the same time, however, Hegel is not mentioned in the lectures, and when looking at the lectures as a whole, the differences in terms of structure, content and concepts are too considerable to make it reasonable to speak of Stang's natural law as Hegelian.

What is certain, however, is that Stang rejects and opposes Kantian natural law. As far as Stang was concerned, Kant's concept of law was misleading and devoid of any positive content. His main argument, which runs through the entire course of lectures, is that the law and the state have a much broader scope than merely ensuring the rights and freedoms of the citizens. This point is repeatedly made by drawing explicitly on the idea of the “ethical main purpose” that he had outlined in the introductory part of the lectures.

As will be clear, Stang is a legal thinker at the very edges of the natural law tradition and a representative of the transitional period in legal thinking in the first half of the 19^th century explored in particular by Diethelm Klippel.