21 Facts About Natural law

Natural law 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 independently of positive law.

The concept of natural law was documented in ancient Greek philosophy, including Aristotle, and was referred to in ancient Roman philosophy by Cicero.

Best evidence of Aristotle's having thought there was a natural law comes from the Rhetoric, where Aristotle notes that, aside from the "particular" laws that each people has set up for itself, there is a "common" law that is according to nature.

Natural law first appeared among the stoics who believed that God is everywhere and in everyone.

Natural law admired him as a patriot, valued his opinions as a moral philosopher, and there is little doubt that he looked upon Cicero's life, with his love of study and aristocratic country life, as a model for his own.

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For Christians, natural law is how human beings manifest the divine image in their life.

The specific content of the natural law is therefore determined by how each person's acts mirror God's internal life of love.

Catholic Church holds the view of natural law introduced by Albertus Magnus and elaborated by Thomas Aquinas, particularly in his Summa Theologiae, and often as filtered through the School of Salamanca.

Natural moral law is concerned with both exterior and interior acts, known as action and motive.

Natural law argued that the antagonism between human beings can be overcome only through a divine law, which he believed to have been sent through prophets.

Fortescue's definition of Natural law, after all, was 'a sacred sanction commanding what is virtuous [honesta] and forbidding the contrary.

Hale wrote a treatise on natural law that circulated among English lawyers in the eighteenth century and survives in three manuscript copies.

Natural law was critical of Hobbes's reduction of natural law to self-preservation and Hobbes's account of the state of nature, but drew positively on Hugo Grotius's De jure belli ac pacis, Francisco Suarez's Tractatus de legibus ac deo legislatore, and John Selden's De jure naturali et gentium juxta disciplinam Ebraeorum.

The natural law was how a rational human being, seeking to survive and prosper, would act.

Natural law, therefore, was discovered by considering humankind's natural rights, whereas previously it could be said that natural rights were discovered by considering the natural law.

Natural law did serve as authority for legal claims and rights in some judicial decisions, legislative acts, and legal pronouncements.

Locke turned Hobbes' prescription around, saying that if the ruler went against natural law and failed to protect "life, liberty, and property, " people could justifiably overthrow the existing state and create a new one.

Whereas legal positivism would say that a law can be unjust without it being any less a law, a natural law jurisprudence would say that there is something legally deficient about an unjust norm.

Besides utilitarianism and Kantianism, natural law jurisprudence has in common with virtue ethics that it is a live option for a first principles ethics theory in analytic philosophy.

Concept of natural law was very important in the development of the English common law.

Natural law jurisprudence is currently undergoing a period of reformulation.