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Natural law

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Natural law (Latin: ius naturale , lex naturalis ) is a system of law based on a close observation of human nature, and based on values intrinsic to human nature that can be deduced and applied independent of positive law (the enacted laws of a state or society). According to natural law theory, all people have inherent rights, conferred not by act of legislation but by "God, nature, or reason." Natural law theory can also refer to "theories of ethics, theories of politics, theories of civil law, and theories of religious morality." Natural law has roots in Western philosophy. In the Western tradition it was anticipated by the Pre-Socratics, for example in their search for principles that governed the cosmos and human beings. The concept of natural law was documented in ancient Greek philosophy, including Aristotle, and was referred to in ancient Roman philosophy by Cicero. References to it are also to be found in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, and were l...
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History

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Ancient Greece edit Plato edit This section possibly contains original research . Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. ( May 2011 ) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) Although Plato did not have an explicit theory of natural law (he rarely used the phrase 'natural law' except in Gorgias 484 and Timaeus 83e), his concept of nature, according to John Wild, contains some of the elements found in many natural law theories. According to Plato, we live in an orderly universe. The basis of this orderly universe or nature are the forms, most fundamentally the Form of the Good, which Plato describes as "the brightest region of Being". The Form of the Good is the cause of all things, and when it is seen it leads a person to act wisely. In the Symposium , the Good is closely identified with the Beautiful. In the Symposium , Plato describes how the expe...
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Contemporary jurisprudence

One modern articulation of the concept of natural laws was given by Belina and Dzudzek: "By constant repetition, those practices develop into structures in the form of discourses which can become so natural that we abstract from their societal origins, that the latter are forgotten and seem to be natural laws." In jurisprudence, natural law can refer to the several doctrines: That just laws are immanent in nature; that is, they can be "discovered" or "found" but not "created" by such things as a bill of rights; That they can emerge by the natural process of resolving conflicts, as embodied by the evolutionary process of the common law; or That the meaning of law is such that its content cannot be determined except by reference to moral principles. These meanings can either oppose or complement each other, although they share the common trait that they rely on inherence as opposed to design in finding just laws. Whereas legal positivism would s...
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