Legal studies readings

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Law

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Jan 9, 2024

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docx

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Legal studies readings Quiz 1: weeks 2 and 3 Quiz 2: week 7 Quiz 3: week 8 Quiz 4: week 9 Week 2 content 1a. classical natural law Natural law in ancient Greece: Sophocles Antigone - Antigone is an example of law understood through classical natural law theory. Here, law is found and followed through appealing to a higher order of justice, one that is beyond mortal men. Indeed, Antigone, as a woman, is the character who knows and follows this higher natural law - The play shows the consequences of transgressing this higher eternal justice: Everyone dies. And the Chorus concludes with a message that human laws should always be made in reverence to eternal, divine, and infinite laws of nature and justice Natural law in ancient Greece: the trial of Socrates - Socrates lectured in the main square of Athens on themes of why we ought to be law-abiding and ethical. Plato, who famously wrote down Socrates’s public lectures, wrote of justice as a natural state of being, decipherable through logic and reason. In Plato’s writings, a just society was one that respects divisions and hierarchies of classes of people, who are ordered and educated to play their part in the just society. In such a society, law is necessary to reflect eternal, natural justice . Justice was believed to be the natural state of civilized societies and individual beings atural law in ancient Greece: Aristotle - For Aristotle, justice was natural and conventional, not eternal, as Socrates’s justice is according to Plato’s writings. Aristotle believed that natural justice arises from the nature of things . He distinguished natural forms of justice from those that depend on convention—arising as just because of human intervention
- For Aristotle, the pursuit of life was the pursuit of happiness and so he believed that humans needed basic conditions to thrive, including a political environment. - What is law for Aristotle? Law is the essential component of the political environment that ensures the basic conditions for people to be trained in, and acquire habits of, living a virtuous, just, happy life Natural law and Christianity: Augustine and Aquinas - The role of the law, to put it simply, was to facilitate people (God’s children) to reach the natural state (God) - Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE) was a Neoplatonist, in that he followed a similar understanding of justice as that of Plato and Socrates: Justice is eternal, a natural state of being decipherable through logic and reason and careful study. Augustine believed that justice was akin to morality, and therefore to be “just” was to be Christian. The role and purpose of law was to bring humans closer to justice - Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274 CE) was an Aristotelian theologian. - Interestingly, Aquinas is credited with rediscovering Aristotle for Western philosophy. He studied Aristotle through Arabic sources because the Western tradition in the 12 th and 13 th centuries had forgotten Greek philosophers in the original. - Aquinas believed that as rational creatures participating in eternal law, humans who were guided and taught how to lead Christian lives would move toward common good - Aquinas believed that as rational creatures participating in eternal law, humans who were guided and taught how to lead Christian lives would move toward common good 1b. Contemporary natural law Apartheid in south Africa - In 1949, the apartheid South African government implemented the Mixed Marriages Act to prohibit marriage between Europeans and non-Europeans. This statute remained law until it was repealed in 1985. - Nelson Mandela, and his anti-apartheid political party the African National Congress (ANC), declared apartheid law “immoral, unjust, and intolerable” (Pavlich 28) Mandela believed that all people, regardless of colour, had a duty to protest these
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