Morality and Natural Law

Morality and Natural Law

1. Aqinas

   • Catholic/Summa Theologica
   • 1. Eternal Law
     • Unchangeable and eternal
     • Practcal reason enables us to access this
       • Thus, human law is linked to higher orders
   • 3. Natural Law
     • Natural law is the participation of rational creatures in eternal law through practical reason
   • 4. Human Law
     • Determinations made by human reason
     • Needs to accord with society's common good
   • 2. Divine Law
     • Comes from scripture and bible
   • A law that doesn't accord with God's law is not law, and there is a positive obligation not to follow it.

2. Finnis

   • Tried to modernise natural law by taking religion out of it (at least explicitly)
   • 7 fomrs of human flourishing
     • Practical Reasonableness
       • No preference among the values
       • Cannot overlook any of them
     • These are all self evident
   • Law brings clarity and predictability to human interactions
   • Rule of law
   • Law presupposes society, justice and morality
   • Unlike other natural law theorists, Finniis says you have to obey the law even when it's crap

3. Fuller

   • No higher order. Law is bound by inner morality
   • Eight things to which good law should strive for
     • If it doesn't comply with any one of these things, then it's not law.
     • his noramlly means that a law is moral
   • Nazi law was not good because it was immoral
   • Procedural natural law
     • Not concerned with the substantive morality of law
   • Focuses on the system. If the system is flawed, then it's not a legal system at all
   • Illustrates his point through a fictional king, Rex, who doesn't follow the rules
   • Hart/Fuller debate
     • Hart concedes that moral questions can be relevant to law
     • Law can be evil, but then you don't have to obey it. It just isn't law then.

4. Kant

   • Lex tallionis
     • Eye for an eye
     • Proportional
     • Look at the individual and the circumstnaces
     • Punishment is about restorying the equilibrium
     • WE consent to retriutive justice through our participation in the social contract
   • Justice is deontological
     • Right or wrong is contained only within the act itself
   • Rejects Bentham's utilitarianism