Here you will learn how to locate natural law within the

larger universe of theories about ethics, and consider both

the basic assumptions of natural law thinking and the basic

challenges that have been raised against them

The Natural Theories of Ethics

The Philosophical Approach

After Nuremberg Trial and Martin L. Kings letter from

Birhingham Jail, it is appealed for unwritten, universal

standards of justice. It further stimulate to philosophise the

theory

Law, Nature, Nature Law

What is nature and what is law?

Why study Natural Law?

Attractions of Natural Law

Origin of Natural Law ?

Different Principles of Natural Law ?

Natural Law and Jurists

Natural Law and Judiciary

Where the concept of Natural Law originated.

View of Socrates and Plato

Different theories of law will be discussed to trace

the principles of Natural Law and to enhance it’s

acceptance

Views of Jurists will be discussed here

Whether Judiciary follows the principles of Natural

Law

Natural Law in Contemporary Period

Does Natural Law believe in the existence of GOD

Whether Natural Law has any relevancy in

contemporary period?

Existence of GOD under severe urgument

Debate between Natural Law and Positive Law Hart – Fuller Debate

What is Natural Law ?

What is ‘Nature’ and what is ‘Law’?

“Whatever the practical reason naturally

apprehends as man's good (or evil) belongs

to the precepts of natural law as something

to be done or avoided."

All those things to which man has a natural

inclination

What is Natural Law ?

Refers to the use of reason to analyze the

human nature and deduce binding rules

of moral behavior

Natural theory is a philosophical and legal

belief that all the humans are governed by

basic innate laws.

‘Natural law theory’ is a label that has been

applied to theories of ethics, theories of

politics, theories of civil law, and theories of

religious morality

What is Natural Law ?

If the word "natural” means anything at all, it

refers to the nature of a man, and when used

with "law," "natural" must refer to an ordering

that is manifested in the inclinations of a man's

nature and to nothing else

Any moral theory that holds that some positive

moral claims are literally true, counts as a

natural law view

Natural law and theology are inextricably

intertwined.

Small commentary on Natural Law

Small commentary on Natural Law

The real character of man is known only through

the history of his cultural expression

"the real man who grows in history amid changing

conditions of social life, acquiring wisdom by the

discipline of life itself - in many respects only

gradually exploring the potentialities and dignities

of his own nature."

Evolution in human life brings to light new

necessities in human nature which,

“struggle for expression and form” Father Murray,

Natural Law in Father Murray's treatment consists of

a gradual development of our knowledge of human

nature

Aristotelian idea of good life in the

Greek polis

Man by his nature is a ‘zoon polıtikon’

Reasonable life were defined as the

virtues of a community-based social

ethics and duties owned by each to the

Greek polis

Readers of the Bible would of course gather that God's law

rules human actions.

Much of the Bible is concerned with divine law,

Law of God as found in the Bible, "do by nature those things

that are of the law", they "show the work of the law written in

their hearts, their conscience bearing witness to them", etc.

(Rom. 2:14).

"The law" here is "the Law", i.e. the Law of Moses, so the

passage suggests that the Law of Moses contains the natural

law.

Hence Gratian's remark that "the law of nature is what is

contained in the Law and the Gospel".

Historically, natural law philosophy can be

divided into four phases

(1) Classical natural law in the Antique Greece and Rome;

(2) Scholastic natural law in the Middle Ages;

(3) Rationalist natural law in the seventeenth and eighteenth

centuries; and

(4) Modern natural law since 1950s

Alternatively, the tradition of natural law philosophy could be

divided into two categories of

classical and

modern,

Thomas Aquinas classifies natural law on

the basis of normative order, i.e.

(a) lex aeterna, or “eternal law”,

(b) lex naturalis, or “natural law”,

(c) lex humana, or “human law”, and

(d) lex divina, or “divine law

Lex aeterna comprises the great world order by

God, the omnipotent Creator,

Reference may be drawn with the all-

encompassing “order of things” that is

imposed upon all the living creatures and

inanimate things alike.

Aquinas made no essential difference between

the inanimate heavenly bodies, the realm of

living creatures, and the human kind

All were equally subject to the order of creation

Lex naturalis is that part of the lex aeterna that

determines the duties of man among the living

creation.

The commands of the lex naturalis are situated

higher in Thomas’ hierarchy of normative orders

than any decrees of the lex humana,

i.e. positive laws issued by the sovereign ruler

for the benefit of the community.

The fourth normative order, i.e. lex divina,

consists of the express revelations and

commandments by the omnipotent God for the

mankind in Bible and other holy scriptures

For Thomas Aquinas, the supreme principle of natural law is that of

doing good and avoiding evil.

Moreover, the precepts of natural law are self-evident (per se nota) and

cannot be validated by reference to any other, still higher principles of

religious or social ethics

In all, he defined the concept of law as follows:

an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has

care of the community, and promulgated.

An unjust law is not binding and will not even qualify as a law

proper, being no more than a “corruption of law”

Thomas pointed out that detailed knowledge of the contents of natural

law could be gained by human reason. Thereby he significantly paved

the way to the breakthrough of a rationalist natural law thinking in the

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Natural Rights & Natural Law ?

What is the relationship between natural law and natural

right

"natural law and the natural rights derived there from”

“ought to be sharply distinguished from one another and

went on to contrast their different meanings”

"[N]atural rights and traditional natural law are, to put it

simply, yet altogether accurately, incompatible; to espouse

one teaching is to make it impossible reasonably to espouse

the other”

There is...a genuine, strong connection between the philosophy of

natural laws and right

Natural rights...may be traced back to natural law and natural law

transports us back to the Greeks."

John Finnis has claimed to derive a doctrine of natural rights

or human rights from Aquinas's teaching on natural law.

Ernest Fortin finds no such teaching in Aquinas

Aquinas derived the word lex (law) from ligare (to bind); but

a binding natural law is not the same as a natural right

“A rights version focuses on the self-assertion of agents; the

genuine natural-law version focuses on the moral command or

address to each”

A moral command of natural law limits our freedom of action;

a natural right affirms a sphere of individual autonomy and

free choice. One cannot deduce the one from the other.

[N]atural rights do not derive from natural law

Thomas Aquinas v Finnis

The idea of subjective rights was "logically

incompatible"

Subjective rights considered as a power or liberty of

the individual

Rights are as fundamental as duties"

"[T]here are rights which every member of our

species is entitled to: human rights”

‘Ius’ meant "what is just" or "what is right." In

this sense ‘ius’ was a restraint on power Justice has its own special object apart from the other virtues

and this is called the just, and this indeed is ius, so it is evident

that ius is the object of justice...in its original meaning ius

signifies the just thing...law (lex) is not ius itself but rather the

basis of ius ……… Summa Theologi

Hence it could not be the source of subjective

rights understood as licit powers inhering in

individual

Aquinas gave several derivative meanings of ius in this

context, they did not include any subjective sense of the

word as referring to a right of an individual

Thomas Aquinas v Finnis

Finnis, therefore, extracted a subjective meaning

from Aquinas's objective definition ….. "lus is the

object of justice”

Object of justice was the objective state of affairs

that justice sought to achieve.

But Finnis argued that, in the text of Aquinas, the

object of justice should be understood as referring

to "the other person's right(s) {ius}

But Aquinas's own definition did not have any

reference to other persons' rights.

Finnis therefore emphasized another usage of

Aquinas, his acceptance of the Roman law

definition of justice as a steady willingness to give

to others

"what is their right {ius suum}.""1 But the word ius

as used here did not have the same meaning as

our English word "right" used in a subjective

sense

The modern word implies a certain freedom of

choice, a freedom to act or not act in the relevant

sphere. The ius of an ancient Roman, what was due

to him, might be a punishment

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