Question

what is natural law? how does Natural Law play a role in society? why do we fallow Natural Law?

Answer 1

• Natural Law is a moral theory of jurisprudence, which maintains that law should be based on morality and ethics. Natural Law holds that the law is based on what’s “correct.” Natural Law is “discovered” by humans through the use of reason and choosing between good and evil. Therefore, Natural Law finds its power in discovering certain universal standards in morality and ethics.
• Natural law, in philosophy, a system of right or justice held to be common to all humans and derived from nature rather than from the rules of society, or positive law.
• The term 'natural law' is derived from the belief that human morality comes from nature. Everything in nature has a purpose, including humans. Our purpose, according to natural law theorists, is to live a good, happy life. Therefore, actions that work against that purpose -- that is, actions that would prevent a fellow human from living a good, happy life -- are considered 'unnatural', or 'immoral'.
• The concept of morality under the natural law theory is not subjective. This means that the definition of what is 'right' and what is 'wrong' is the same for everyone, everywhere.
• The natural law approach to solving ethical dilemmas begins with the basic belief that everyone has the right to live their life. From there, natural law theorists draw a line between an innocent life and the life of an 'unjust aggressor.' The natural law theory recognizes the legal and moral concept of self-defense, which is often used to justify acts of war.
• Because man’s essence does not change, but his circumstances and situations do, “application of the natural law varies greatly”. For instance, capital punishment may be morally necessary in a primitive society but needlessly barbaric in a society with secure laws and prisons; and the moral restrictions on warfare today, with its weapons of mass destruction, must be far stricter than those in the past.
• It provides the necessary basis for the civil law,for civil law forbids many acts, such as rape and torture and slavery, because they are morally wrong and harmful to human nature’s health and flourishing. Without a natural law basis for civil law, civil law becomes based on power, whether collective or individual.
• The divine and natural law shows man the way to follow so as to practice the good and attain his end. The natural law states the first and essential precepts which govern the moral life. It hinges upon the desire for God and submission to him, who is the source and judge of all that is good, as well as upon the sense that the other is one’s equal.
• In a sense natural law is as important as it ever was. At some level, law and the goals behind it (justice, equity, fairness, security) do not prove themselves out of thin air. You need to adopt some underlying decisions about what to achieve, and the reasons for doing so.
• If you believe that every human being has dignity, that people should be free, that the individual should be empowered, that people should not be forced to do things against their interest unless there is some principled plan for doing so, that human relationships should be aligned with nature, or science, or reason, all of these underlying principles are not created out of the legal system, they are the premises on which a legal system can be built.
• That's from a legal perspective. Nobody says you even have to start from a legal perspective when deciding what to think and do about laws. Jefferson's "we hold these truths to be self-evident" is not the law in the US, but it is the philosophy behind much of the law.