Natural Law

• Natural Law

  An ambiguous legal concept: speaks what it takes to be one central truth to law which is that human law is a moral instrument, and embodiment of principles of reason and conscience implicit in human nature.
• What do natural lawyers do?

  Natural lawyers conflate law and morality and declares laws that violate the dictates of "right reason" to not be law at all.
• What are the two reasons that are against subscribing completely to natural law as account of law's legitimacy?

  1. Natural law is not (at least at its inception) a theory of law at all; it is a moral theory about right conduct.
  2. According to natural lawyers, the dictates of right reason alone must determine our political affairs and supply the content of our law.
• What does it mean when natural law is really a "moral theory" instead of a mode of legitimising law and why it should not be ascribed completely alone?

  Natural law as a legal theory is the application of that theory of conduct and that theory of moral knowledge to law and politics. It carries with it all of the conceptual fragilities and historical entanglements of those theories.
• What is the issue when natural lawyers believe natural law must determine political affairs and supply the content of our law?

  This is because, it is to claim both that

  1. Trust must reign sovereign over law and politics and that philosophy should replace past, history, and tradition in our affairs – we cannot do without the past.
  2. ;natural law then will not do as a narrative of the law's foundations because if it fails to take the law as we understand and practice it, seriously.