The Laws Should And Should Not Be Place

Natural law is a concept with a long history dating back to the Greco-Roman philosophers. Despite some variations among philosophers one point of agreement was understood as “that process in nature by which human beings, through the use of sound reason, were able to perceive what was morally right

King categorizes law into two types: just and unjust. He describes a just law as a “man-made code” that falls in line with moral law while an unjust law is one that deviates from moral law. King claims that just laws can uplift people while unjust ones degrade them. In stating these ideas, King provides his audience with his own definition of what laws are and what they can do. The reader can now apply this definition to attain a better understanding of King’s ideology and better connect with King’s larger purpose of the letter. King also examines laws that in method are fair but in practice are oppressive. This helps make his definition be more complete by presenting a multitude of ways a law can be unjust. He shows that laws can be unjust in writing and in application. King explains his criteria for just and unjust laws in order to move his argument forward in answering the criticisms of his fellow clergymen.

King then differentiates between just laws and unjust laws. By quoting St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, he states that unjust laws are not considered laws.

If a law is not moral, thus it is not a law. Aquinas thinks this for there must be a moral reason to follow a law.  Thus, if a law does not have any moral reason for a person to follow the law, the law is unjust. According to Aquinas, a sanction (a punishment) would not be a good enough reason to follow an unjust law. The Fugitive Slave Law goes against the laws of nature. Humans have their own free will and the law of nature never permits one human to claim another human. People are not property and have their own free will.  Obviously, morality says people are not possessions. One cannot approach a person and say, “I own you.” It is not morally justifiable. To Aquinas the Fugitive Slave Law is not a real law for the sake that the law does not follow morality. At the time of the Fugitive Slave Law, people knew slavery was wrong; so, the jurors in Morris did conduct appropriately. As stated before, natural law theory states a law requires morality. The jurors let the emancipators free since the Fugitive Slave Law was against morality and natural law.  The jurors did the morally suitable thing through the lens of natural law theory since they were doing what morality said.
        Positivism, another attempt to answer what the law is, leads to a similar outcome as the Natural Law theory which was that the jurors in Morris did the right thing. John Austin discusses positivism in his book “The Province of Jurisprudence Determined.” First, Austin defines

The 3 kinds of laws that Aquinas explains are eternal law, natural law and human laws. Eternal law is the law that is written in the mind of God. This means that whichever law that God places in his own mind is the eternal law, meaning that it is unchanging and everlasting. Natural Law is also known as Divine law. This law is in correspondence to the eternal law.

It is imperative to understand Aquinas’ definition of just and unjust laws. Through defining these terms, we will be able to understand Aquinas’ claim. A law that is just has the power of “binding in conscience” (Aquinas in Dimock, ed., 2002, p.20). It is derived from eternal law and therefore inherently morally correct. An unjust law lacks this integral quality. Aquinas is willing to say that an unjust law is a so-called law, but a just law is a law proper in its entirety.

For Thomas Aquinas, there were four types of law: eternal, natural, human, and divine. Eternal law was the basis for the other three types of law; the aspects of morality, physics, and math are part of this law. Human law was the law of humans for their government and direction for the desire for a common good. Human laws were derived from natural laws and most of the time, natural laws dictated that positive laws should be. Aquinas takes the position that any unjust law is not a law, a just law was one that was consistent with the requirements of the natural laws.

Laws can be interpreted as a beliefs and each individual builds it’s his/her own set of rule. To illustrate, Cicero states that “the ruler should also be a good speaker, respect religion and be just a lucky person.” Hence, these aspects are important in order to gain people’s trust; because if a politician or even a ‘simple human being’ is making errors, therefore, his awkwardness will be always remembered-bad deeds are remembered and good are

Among some of the subjects that Aquinas tackles in On Law, Morality, and Politics is the dilemma of War and Killing. Aquinas sums up the legality of war through three criteria: that the war waged is done by a legitimate authority, that the war is just because the enemy has done something grossly wrong, and the intention of the war is to solely right the wrong. Also we see Aquinas say that the killing of an innocent person is justified if God will's it.

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

Society today in America is ruled by media and government. We abide by the law out of fear of being arrested. Some people may abide by the law by the goodness of their hearts but most do not. Aquinas believes that law is power and though his writings were done years ago, it still applies to today’s society in many aspects. It is important to know this because humans work systematically. When people do good, they get rewarded and when they do bad, they get punished. Aquinas talks about eternal law, which is the divine law, he also talks about natural law, and then the human law in his book Treatise of Law and I will be referring to questions 90-94.

It is important to highlight that Natural Laws differ from acts which occur naturally. There are many aspects to Natural Law, the first being the concept that it is absolute; therefore it includes set rules to follow. Thomas Aquinas believed that these rules were the primary precepts, along with the secondary precepts, which are obtained from natural morality within humans.

St. Thomas Aquinas was a Dominican monk who wrote on many aspects of law writings. This paper will ultimately discuss St. Thomas Aquinas’s ten elements of human law, and how humans have consciously came together to bind different variations of eternal and natural law to create now our human laws. Aquinas’s focuses mostly on the natural laws and in the laws which derived from the eternal laws that were ultimately produced by God. He also focuses on understanding God and all the relationships between him and his creations. Aquinas describes the law as a dictate of reason from head ruler of a particular community, equally to God who is the ruler of his people which in turn created eternal laws to control the masses. This dictate of reasons is created and put into place by the head of that particular community and are created according to the reasoning of that particular head ruler. Each law is created is according to what the head ruler thinks is best for his community. However, some of the rules that he set into place result to non-functionality of the community and can cause some friction. However, all this can be changed with laws adapting to the request of particular ideology in a community. Aquinas also says that God has an idea on how he governs the earth. He governs using eternal law and uses his intellect to make the earth a better place for his creation (Dimock, 10). Hence, this is where begin to notice the mergence of natural law. Aquinas says that the law is not only

Rather, God is the source of being, truth and goodness, in whom we live, move and exist; God is more intimately present to us than we are to ourselves. Further, Thomas Acquinas distinguished law into four categories: eternal, divine, natural and man-made. Eternal law reflected God’s grand blueprint for the world, divine law is that which finds expression in the scriptures, natural law was eternal law as it applied to human conduct and man-made law was devised by human beings to befit natural law as per the changing society. For Acquinas, the elementary precept of natural law is per se nota, known through themselves. Acquinas propounded that ‘Good is to be done and evil is to be avoided.’ He believed in the principle of non-contradiction, which like the fundamentals of natural law were general and static. On the contrary, man-made laws are dynamic and accommodating. Further Acquinas maintains that when human laws contravene natural laws, they are regarded as ‘acts of violence’ and ‘perversion of law’. Such laws have no legal validity and cease, in this regard, to be law as the law of nature is the foundation of all human