Law & Paneir

The term “natural law” is ambiguous. It refers to a type of moral theory, as well as to a type of legal theory, but the core claims of the two kinds of theory are logically independent. It does not refer to the laws of nature , the laws that science aims to describe. According to natural law moral theory, the moral standards that govern human behavior are, in some sense, objectively derived from the nature of human beings and the nature of the world. While being logically independent of natural law legal theory, the two theories intersect. However, the majority of the article will focus on natural law legal theory. According to natural law legal theory, the authority of legal standards necessarily derives, at least in part, from considerations having to do with the moral merit of those standards. There are a number of different kinds of natural law legal theories, differing from each other with respect to the role that morality plays in determining the authority of legal norms. The c...

by George Anastaplo The dependence of morality on law is insisted upon in the closing pages of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, perhaps the most detailed treatise on the moral virtues in antiquity. It is recognized there that law is needed if the moral virtues described in the Ethics are to be nurtured. (The law can contribute as well to the development of the intellectual virtues by promoting the conditions that they require.) This is true in the United States as well, and not only in how our legally mandated school systems and our criminal laws contribute to the shaping, including the moral training, of citizens. Yet the typical opinions in a contemporary liberal democracy are likely to be (1) that morality cannot be legislated; and (2) that even if morality could be legislated, it should not be––that to do so is somehow improper, even tyrannical, either because there is no morality objective enough to justify legal enforcement or because one's autonomy and individuality wou...

Recently a pastor informed his congregation that Christians can no longer seek to impose their moral values on a society which does not accept Christianity. The second part of the statement, at least, is quite wrong. While Church membership and attendance has sharply decreased, the Roy Morgan Study of the Values of the Australian People demonstrates that 80% believe in God. Should Christians seek to impose their moral values on law and society? There are some who are forcibly and aggressively arguing that Christian values must be expelled from law, society and politics. Gareth Evans (now Senator Evans) is reported in The Sydney Morning Herald, May 7th, 1976, as stating at a convention of the South Australian Council for Civil Liberties that children wanted a right to sexual freedom and education and "protection from the influence of Christianity " The same article referred to Mr Richard Neville (of Oz fame) as stating that "promiscuity is one beneficial...

At first there seems to be no distinction between law and morality. There are passages in ancient Greek writers, for example, which seem to suggest that the good person is the one who will do what is lawful. It is the lawgivers, in these early societies, who determine what is right and wrong. But it is not long before thoughtful people recognize the difference between what is actually legal, or legally right according to the political authorities and what should be legal. What should be legal roughly corresponds to what is really right or just, that is, what we would call morally right. We find, for instance, the distinction between what is legally or conventionally right and what is naturally (or as we would say today morally) right. Sometimes this is expressed as an opposition between what the gods command (i.e., what is morally right) and what the political authorities command (i.e., what is legally right). This is dramatically illustrated in Sophocles' tragedy Antigone , in...

By Ben Saul. Edited by John Gershman Introduction The story of attempts to define “terrorism” in international law is well known, as are the related attempts to exempt liberation violence from any definition of terrorism. The highly charged political atmosphere surrounding international discussions of terrorism has tended to entrench opposing ideological and rhetorical positions, often leading to neither side taking the arguments of the other seriously. This article pauses to take seriously two specific claims of justification for terrorist violence: firstly, that some civilians are not “innocent” and deserve to be killed; and secondly, that suicide bombing is excused by the defense of necessity. It unravels each of these claims and subjects them to the scrutiny of existing international legal principles (particularly international humanitarian law (IHL)) and the moral framework underlying those principles. While there are a range of different justifications presented for terrorism, th...

When nations find themselves in trouble, their difficulties have usually been a long time in the making. In the case of the terrorism that now afflicts the nations of the West, there is a long intellectual history behind it -- one which is rather unflattering to those who see themselves as the main victims of terrorism. The intellectual roots of terrorism lie in three philosophical ideas which, ironically, are peculiarly Western: popular sovereignty, self-determination and ethical consequentialism. The diffusion of political responsibility that results from popular sovereignty, the belief that every group has a right to its own state, and the decline in the belief in absolute human rights have together fostered a hospitable intellectual climate for terrorism. Even opponents of terrorism may feel a certain moral ambivalence when faced with acts of terror. One reason academics, journalists and politicians have had difficulty in responding to terrorism is that it is hard to define terrori...