Lesson 1 of 84 · Natural Law and Natural Rights
What Is Natural Law?
If a government passed a law ordering something monstrous, would it still be a law?
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Natural law is the idea that there are moral standards built into human nature or the order of the world, which people can discover by reason and which exist whether or not any government writes them down. Its rival idea, positive law, is law that is 'posited', or laid down, by a human authority such as a king, parliament or court. The central question of this course is how the two relate: is an unjust statute still a law, and may people resist it?
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Defenders of natural law say it gives a yardstick for judging every legal system, which is why it has been invoked against tyranny, slavery and genocide. Critics reply that people disagree deeply about what nature or reason requires, so appeals to a higher law can become a cover for personal or religious preferences. Tracing this debate from ancient Greece to the twentieth century shows how ideas about justice shaped real revolutions, trials and declarations.
Key facts · 1 of 2
- 1Natural law holds that some moral standards are discoverable by human reason and are binding independent of any government.
- 2Positive law comes from the Latin 'positum', meaning 'laid down' or 'placed', and refers to law made by human authorities.
- 3Thomas Aquinas, writing in the 1260s and 1270s, gave the most influential medieval account of natural law.
Key facts · 2 of 2
- 4The 1945–46 Nuremberg trial and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights both drew on the idea that some standards bind all states.
Timeline
- c. 441 BCE
Sophocles' Antigone dramatizes a clash between a ruler's decree and 'unwritten' divine law.
- c. 54–51 BCE
Cicero writes that true law is 'right reason in agreement with nature'.
- 1776
The Declaration of Independence appeals to 'the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God'.
- 1948
The UN General Assembly adopts the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Then & Now
Arguments about whether courts should look beyond the written text to deeper principles of justice continue in legal systems around the world.
Mind = blown
The word 'jurisprudence', the philosophy of law, comes from the Latin 'iuris prudentia', meaning 'knowledge of law'.
Question 1 of 3
Which statement best describes natural law?
Question 2 of 3
Why have critics worried about appeals to a 'higher law'?
Question 3 of 3
A judge refuses to apply a statute because it is 'contrary to justice itself'. Which tradition is the judge drawing on?
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What Is Natural Law?
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