Natural Law Critique

The foundations of law have been set in the ideas of natural laws that are given to us. There are many different theories on how our laws of nature have brought us to develop the social contracts and government of today’s society. John Locke and Saint Thomas Aquinas’s views of how social contracts are developed from natural and eternal laws are both well seated in the belief of God given rights, but differ in the politics of the governments.

Natural law, the idea that man is born with certain rights, began to take hold in Europe during the 18th century. Natural law recognizes the rights that man alone has at birth,

These rights are said to be inscribed in the hearts of all men (Seagrave 2011). Natural law is God’s law that every man can know.

The Law of Nature is discussed greatly in the book Mere Christianity of C. S. Lewis, who asserts that it is the Law of Nature which makes humans obligated to do the right thing. According to Lewis, this law can also be referred as The Real Morality or the Standard to which all people follow, and which people use to evaluate their and others’ behaviors. The Law of Nature tells the people which circumstance is appropriate to execute certain actions, and which situation is not suitable for certain behavior. For instance, in every human, there is a warrior trait, which is said to be necessary by the Law of Nature in order to protect oneself against life-threatening beings, but to be wrong when it is used to injure the innocent people. However, the Law of Nature functions beyond the machinery of evaluating

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NATURAL LAW AND LEGAL POSITIVISM This essay is going to discuss and analyse the differences between two basic principles- natural law and legal positivism. According to Hume, there are two realms of human enquiry , one in the field of facts which is concerned with what ‘ is ‘ actually the case and the other in the field of ‘ought’ that is, what ought to be the case1. Those who believe in the principle of natural law are known as naturalists while those who believe in the principle of legal positivism or ‘positive law’ are known as positivists. This is a brief overview of the two principles of

First and foremost the law of nature is “a theory that has roots in Judeo-Christian conception of social life. The theory holds the law and morality must be ssynonymous” (Boyd, 2015). And the

     The Declaration of Independence forthrightly states "We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The origin of these Rights is "...the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God..." (Declaration of Independence). The Founders used the principle of Natural Law as the basis for the Declaration of Independence as well as the Constitution. This makes the concept of Natural Rights extraordinarily important when examining the foundations of our government. However, despite this, the Natural Law argument seems to have become lost

Though the lecture ‘Path of Law’ has been subject to criticisms, yet even after a century it has both a note of triumph.

Natural law theory is based on human nature and its predisposition to do good. The determination of what’s good and evil, however, is often drawn

The first principle of law according to Aquinas is that "good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided. All other precepts of the natural law are based upon this” (ST I-II.94.2). The other precepts are self-preservation, procreation, education of offspring, seek truth avoid ignorance, and live in society. Aquinas believes the natural law is written on every human and every human has equal knowledge of good and evil; however, once individual circumstances are factored in, it is dependent upon humans to follow or ignore it. However, Aquinas believes that “the natural law, in the abstract, can nowise be blotted out from men 's hearts” (ST I-II.94.6) but through bad habits of the society it could be weakened. According to Aquinas, the natural law has two main aspects. The first of these is that “the natural law is altogether unchangeable in its first principles” (ST I-II.94.5), which means God can add to, but not take away from, the law. This only applies to the primary precepts; the secondary precepts may change in some particular aspects. The second aspect is that “the written law is said to be given for the correction of the natural law” (ST I-II.94.6.ad 1); to put it simply, human laws are necessary to fill in the gaps/loopholes left from the natural law. Aquinas’ teachings shows that the actions of human is either good or bad depending on whether it conforms to reason.

Natural law has a lot of strength and weaknesses, but what is natural law in the first place? Natural law is a universal guide for judging the moral values of our choices, and looks at human in a way that says we at the end of the day know the right thing to do. Weaknesses for natural law are many, one of them is to see good automatically found in nature but the question begs to be asked is everything in nature actually good. Aquinas thought that all people searched for God and this is why they found good, but that wasn’t true back then and definitely isn’t true now. Another weakness is that having babies is important in natural law so does this mean that people who are incapable of having babies our unnatural. It is believed that moral

Rule of law in simplest terms means law rules, that is, law is supreme. The term “Rule of law‟ is derived from the French phrase “la principle de legalite” (the principle of legality) which means a government on principle of law and not of men. Rule of Law is a viable and dynamic concept and, like many other concepts, is not capable of any exact definition. It is used in contradistinction to rule of man. Sir Edward Coke, the Chief Justice in King James I‟s reign is said to be the originator of this principle. However, concrete shape was given to it by Professor A.V. Dicey, for the first time in his book “Law of the Constitution” (1885) in the form of three principles.

The rule of law is a difficult concept to grasp and proves elusive to substantive definition. However, the following work considers the attempts of various social and legal theorists to define the concept and pertinent authorities are considered. Attitudes and emphasis as to the exact shape, form and content of the rule of law differ quite widely depending on the socio-political perspective and views of respective commentators (Slapper and Kelly, 2009, p16), although there are common themes that are almost universally adopted. The conclusions to this work endeavour to consolidate thinking on the rule of law in order to address the question posed in the title, which is at first sight a deceptively simple one.

In order to address the scenarios in this assignment, one must define the when life begins. According to Thomas Aquinas God created the universe and all plants, animals and life of all types under the doctrine of External Law. Based on his vision, God instilled Natural Law in law to fulfill the parameters of External Law. Self-preservation is not only a function of protecting one’s self being, but also by ensuring the species survives. This is accomplished through the second inclination of procreation. Aquinas’ teachings proclaim that God created the universe and by doing so, created all life. So logic must dictate that life begins at conception and that the developing fetus has already been instilled with Natural Law.

In this paper, I will propose that it is better to look at whether a law is legally valid or not through the perspective of natural law theory as opposed to positivist theory. My argument consists mostly of the language of “improvement” which can only exist based on the theory of natural law which states that law is something which has an objective truth behind it. Only when there is an objective mark to hit can there be hits and misses and I believe that positivism disregards the possibility of hits and misses entirely. So, my argument is that it makes more sense to consider legal validity of a law from the perspective of natural law rather than positive law because it includes not only the previously set up legal system when considering validity, but it also considers the general idea of some kind of morality as well. A sub argument is that the starting legal system must have had some basis by which to have been created and accepted which must be some form or notion of morality.