Jurisprudence Notes
NATURAL LAW – DUTY TO OBEY UNJUST LAWS
Important aspects of natural law can be traced back to Aristotle, Plato and the stories of Sophocles, Antigone & Oedipus. They offered arguments for the existence of a higher form of law, a set of standards against which existing legal norms can be compared and judged.
Plato argued that individual objects (e.g. individual trees and chairs and individual instances of equality or beauty) were imperfect reflections or instances of an eternal Idea or Form (of “Tree”, “Chair”, “Equality” or “Beauty”) (Bix).
Gods actively involved in controlling aspects of people’s lives.
Problem with this approach to natural law is that one cannot prove that a model concept is the foundation of a real rule. No correlation between the laws in the ideal and the real world.
Cicero was a Roman orator, writing in the first century BC. He was strongly influenced by the Greek stoic philosophers and best remembered for his elegant restatement of their ideas, that being: • Natural law is derived from the exercise of human rationality in harmony with nature. Notion of a higher rationality “rectaratio”. Not necessarily God but a law of a higher order. o “If the city legislature makes a law that says that rape, theft and robbery is legitimate then that law is false. It may be compared to the arrangements made by a band of robbers amongst themselves” • Natural law is universal, unchanging and everlasting- the Ius Gentium. o Ius Naturale looks to the origin of the law in natural reason/rationality and the Ius Gentium to its universal application (interlinked). • It summons to duty by its commands and averts wrongdoing by its prohibitions- law as a reformative spirit. • It is a sin to alter or repeal natural law and it is impossible to abolish it entirely • We need not look outside ourselves for its content or interpretation; • God is the author, promulgator and enforcer of natural law. However, God
Important aspects of natural law can be traced back to Aristotle, Plato and the stories of Sophocles, Antigone & Oedipus. They offered arguments for the existence of a higher form of law, a set of standards against which existing legal norms can be compared and judged.
Plato argued that individual objects (e.g. individual trees and chairs and individual instances of equality or beauty) were imperfect reflections or instances of an eternal Idea or Form (of “Tree”, “Chair”, “Equality” or “Beauty”) (Bix).
Gods actively involved in controlling aspects of people’s lives.
Problem with this approach to natural law is that one cannot prove that a model concept is the foundation of a real rule. No correlation between the laws in the ideal and the real world.
Cicero was a Roman orator, writing in the first century BC. He was strongly influenced by the Greek stoic philosophers and best remembered for his elegant restatement of their ideas, that being: • Natural law is derived from the exercise of human rationality in harmony with nature. Notion of a higher rationality “rectaratio”. Not necessarily God but a law of a higher order. o “If the city legislature makes a law that says that rape, theft and robbery is legitimate then that law is false. It may be compared to the arrangements made by a band of robbers amongst themselves” • Natural law is universal, unchanging and everlasting- the Ius Gentium. o Ius Naturale looks to the origin of the law in natural reason/rationality and the Ius Gentium to its universal application (interlinked). • It summons to duty by its commands and averts wrongdoing by its prohibitions- law as a reformative spirit. • It is a sin to alter or repeal natural law and it is impossible to abolish it entirely • We need not look outside ourselves for its content or interpretation; • God is the author, promulgator and enforcer of natural law. However, God