Natural Law: A Historical Overview of the Superior Principles of Human Conduct - Prof. Bel, Apuntes de Teoría del Derecho

¡Descarga Natural Law: A Historical Overview of the Superior Principles of Human Conduct - Prof. Bel y más Apuntes en PDF de Teoría del Derecho solo en Docsity! NATURAL LAW- ORIGIN The nature of the doctrine • adherent of natural law believes that the principles of natural law are superior to those made by man , these are immutable and eternal • Man-made law should be in accord with the principles of natural law • Natural law- theory that there are certain principles of human conduct...) With which man-made law must conform if it is to be valid” • A lot of people who oppose laws made by the government (church, animal rights activists) find nothing surprising in the notion of natural law • The natural law has a long history- almost as the history of European civilisation • Natural law- that which furthers the attainment by men of the ends that nature has made it man’s nature to seek to achieve • The natural lawyer recognises the existence of man- made law but regards this as inferior to natural law, if man-made law conflicts with natural law, man-made law is deemed to lack validity History of the Natural Law The Ancient world- Greece - In Plato’s idealism and in Aristotle’s Theology we can see strands that were later to form the full doctrine of natural law PLATO: • Regards values as having an eternal existence and eternal veracity • What for us were abstractions for him had a permanent existence • Qualities such as justice and truth- exist in their own right – men can only reproduce them • His school of view ”idealism”- the idea if a thing has its own existence – he believes that there is an “ideal” world outside the one in which we experience through our senses • He believed a man could attain the knowledge of the external truths – cognitivists • For him “virtue” “honesty”- moral principles od universal and timeless validity unaffected by human attitudes • He classifies society into 3 social classes- rulers, auxiliaries and the rest (farmers, artisans) • The hierarchy- legitimated by myth, all members of society come to accept this truth ARISTOTLE: • Highest form of human society lay in the Greek city state + by creating political societies- mankind was progressing towards which had been the end from the beginning • For him the universe-dynamic • He discusses the nature of justice; two sorts of political justice; • NATURAL: universal, unaffected by human convention • CONVENTIONAL: it takes a variety of forms, applied only after the appropriate form has been established • Central point of his view- two-fold: 1. Justice can’t exist among people unless their relationships with each other- governed by law • 2. Law exists only among people who have the capacity to be guilty of injustice • Natural- same validity everywhere, legal- once laid down is decisive • He accepted that there is a natural and universal right and wrong apart from human ordinance and convention “Distributive and Corrective justice”: • Distributive- does not require the distribution un equal shares • Corrective- deals type of subject which routinely comes from the courts in civil and criminal law “Equity”: • To adapt the law to individual circumstances and to produce the result that the legislature would have produced had it foreseen the circumstances of the individual case • The underlying idea- discerned even in contexts where the terminology is not used “The validity of human law”