Natural law or the law of nature (Latin: lex naturalis) has been described as a law whose content is set by nature and is thus universal.[1] As classically used, natural law refers to the use of reason to analyze human nature and deduce binding rules of moral behavior. The phrase natural law is opposed to the positive law (meaning "man-made law", not "good law"; cf. posit) of a given political community, society, or nation-state, and thus can function as a standard by which to criticize that law.[2] In natural law jurisprudence, on the other hand, the content of positive law cannot be known without some reference to the natural law (or something like it). Used in this way, natural law can be invoked to criticize decisions about the statutes, but less so to criticize the law itself. Some use natural law synonymously with natural justice or natural right (Latin ius naturale)[citation needed]
Although natural law is often conflated with common law, the two are distinct in that natural law is a view that certain rights or values are inherent in or universally cognizable by virtue of human reason or human nature, while common law is the legal tradition whereby certain rights or values are legally cognizable by virtue of judicial recognition or articulation.[3] Natural law theories have, however, exercised a profound influence on the development of English common law,[4] and have featured greatly in the philosophies of Thomas Aquinas, Francisco Suárez, Richard Hooker, Thomas Hobbes, Hugo Grotius, Samuel von Pufendorf, John Locke, Francis Hutcheson, Jean Jacques Burlamaqui, and Emmerich de Vattel. Because of the intersection between natural law and natural rights, it has been cited as a component in United States Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. The essence of Declarationism is that the founding of the United States is based on Natural law.
Paul of Tarsus wrote in his
Epistle to the Romans: "For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things contained in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law unto themselves, their conscience also bearing witness."
[40] The intellectual historian A.J. Carlyle has commented on this passage as follows:
There can be little doubt that St Paul's words imply some conception analogous to the 'natural law' in Cicero, a law written in men's hearts,
recognized by man's reason, a law distinct from the positive law of any State, or from what St Paul recognized as the revealed law of God. It is in this sense that St Paul's words are taken by the Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries like
St Hilary of Poitiers,
St Ambrose, and
St Augustine, and there seems no reason to doubt the correctness of their interpretation.
[41]
Some early
Church Fathers, especially those in the
West, sought to incorporate natural law into
Christianity. The most notable among these was
Augustine of Hippo, who equated natural law with man's
prelapsarian state; as such, a life according to nature was no longer possible and men needed instead to seek salvation through the
divine law and
grace of
Jesus Christ.
In the Twelfth Century,
Gratian equated the natural law with divine law. A century later, St.
Thomas Aquinas in his
Summa Theologiae I-II qq. 90-106, restored Natural Law to its independent state, asserting natural law as the rational creature's participation in the eternal law. Yet, since human reason could not fully comprehend the
Eternal law, it needed to be supplemented by revealed
Divine law. (See also
Biblical law in Christianity.) Meanwhile, Aquinas taught that all human or positive laws were to be judged by their conformity to the natural law. An unjust law is not a law, in the full sense of the word. It retains merely the 'appearance' of law insofar as it is duly constituted and enforced in the same way a just law is, but is itself a 'perversion of law.'
[42] At this point, the natural law was not only used to pass judgment on the moral worth of various laws, but also to determine what the law said in the first place. This principle laid the seed for possible societal tension with reference to tyrants.
[43]
The natural law was inherently
teleological and
deontological in that although it is aimed at goodness, it is entirely focused on the ethicalness of actions, rather than the consequence. The specific content of the natural law was therefore determined by a conception of what things constituted happiness, be they temporal satisfaction or salvation. The
state, in being bound by the natural law, was conceived as an institution directed at bringing its subjects to true happiness.
Natural law - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Homosexual behaviour violates the Natural Law.
