The Nature of Law

The natural law calls both for the positive law and for the lawmaker. To begin with, only the first principles and proximate conclusions (Decalogue) are immediately evident and epistemologically necessary. The theoretical reason proceeds from the particular, which is given in sense perception, to the general. Therefore its knowledge bears the stamp of certainty and necessity far more than does that of the practical reason. The practical reason proceeds from the general principle to the singular, to the contingent, to the multiplicity of possible means and intermediate ends in a world which is incessantly changing in virtue of the actions of others and one’s own development, although the higher end, e.g., the common good, remains ever the same. Consequently the more the practical reason descends from the principles to the further conclusions and comes to apply them to increasingly more concrete situations of fact, its knowledge becomes more uncertain, variable, and questionable in application. St. Thomas rightly observes that “to suitably introduce justice into business transactions and personal relations is more laborious and difficult to understand than the remedies in which consists the whole art of medicine.”3 Owing to this very uncertainty, men stand in great need of the positive norm which derives and determines what is to be inferred from the general principle, regard being had for the national character and the concrete historical situation. Without such a positive norm no certainty and no order at all could arise in view of the number and diversity of the deductions. Above all, everyone who has not succumbed to rationalism and does not regard men as purely thinking and inferring beings knows how great a danger reason runs of being misled by passions when it comes to applying norms to one’s own as well as to opposing interests. He also knows how easily the voice of conscience is drowned out by the tempestuous demands of selfishness. An authoritative determination of the conclusions is plainly needed in order that these, as norms which emanate from authority and demand obedience, may be able to support conscience and reason.

For the same reasons the natural law as well as what is derived from it requires also a positive, earthly sanction, which it does not of itself immediately possess. Indirectly, of course, it does have a sanction. Every people that disregards the laws of moral living is doomed to deterioration and to destruction. Justice remains the foundation of the state, and world history continues to be world judgment. Yet an immediate sanction is needed, a direct threat of force. The menace to order is inherent in the imperfection of all that is human, in the disordered vital impulse and immoderate instinctive drives of individuals and their groups and communities. The propensity to disorder which is found in man and his associations is just as strong as, nay even stronger than, the rational longing for ordo. All this calls for a positive ordering and safeguarding of human existence and welfare at the hands of a concrete power. The philosophia perennis does not subscribe to the unfounded optimism of Rousseau’s idea of natural law. It is aware of the demonic element in man’s nature, of the dark forces which produce disorder and destruction. Even though, for example, the natural law forbids theft, there is need of the positive penal law which attaches the penalty as a legal consequence to the actual fact of theft. Justice determines what this penalty is in the light of the principle of proportionateness; and prudence aids in its determination by drawing upon the principle of suitableness of means to the end and upon the requirements of education. For punishment is not an end in itself: its object is requital (iustitia vindicativa) as well as deterrence and education.5

The special form of the virtue of prudence for the lawmaker consists not only herein, but also in deriving the positive norm from the principles with due regard for concrete circumstances. St. Thomas, it will be recalled, repeatedly mentions the function of circumstances in determining the reasonableness of a law. “The execution of justice, in so far as it is directed to the common good, which is part of the kingly office, needs the guidance of prudence. Hence these two virtues—prudence and justice—belong most properly to a king,” i.e., in his principal function of lawmaking.6 For prudence combines the knowledge of general principles with the knowledge of particulars which are the matter of action, since it governs the right choice of means for attaining the end. The prudence of the lawmaker is the most perfect species of prudence, and it is compared to the prudence of subjects as mastercraft to handicraft.8

It is thus sufficiently established that all positive laws should in some way be derivations from the natural law or determinations of it. But this does not mean that every positive law which is not a correct derivation or determination of the natural law is therefore not binding and is devoid of obligation. Only those positive laws are purely and simply non-obligatory which command one to do something that in itself is immoral and unjust. To this category belong laws that are at variance with the prohibitive precepts of the natural law. There is nothing revolutionary about this; it is something self-evident. Scarcely anybody will regard as right a law which allows assassination, adultery, or perjury. Few will call the early Christians contemners of law because they refused obedience to the pagan laws which prescribed sacrifices to idols.

On the other hand, an unjust law (e.g., a tax law which is in conflict with the principle of justice and proportionateness) is not solely on that account devoid of obligation. An unjust law is not forthwith an immoral law in the strict sense, that is, a law which prescribes a sinful action. In cases of this kind the maintenance of even an imperfect ordo takes precedence over resistance to a particular unjust law. The natural law is, of course, a norm for the lawmaker. Such a view has been held by nearly all philosophers of law, including the founders of the modern theory of sovereignty, Bodin and for a time even Hobbes. Yet a positive law which is certainly unjust but does not contradict the natural law in its prohibitive norms does not give to judges and other public officials, whom the constitution obliges to apply and execute the law, or to the subjects of the law a right to consider the law non-binding and invalid. Even a tax law which agrees neither with distributive justice nor, say, with the principle of expenditure in the general interest does not justify a person in defrauding the revenue. The natural-law principles of obedience and truthfulness here again take precedence. The proper remedy is not disobedience but use of the means provided by the constitution. Since, however, the prohibitive precepts of the natural law have precisely the function of protecting the social order in its deepest foundation, a positive law that commands something which is in itself unjust and immoral must be regarded as non-law. When little or no respect any longer exists for any authority; when marriage generally ceases to be differentiated from concubinage and promiscuity; when the honor of one’s fellow citizen is no longer respected and oaths no longer have force, then the possibility of social living, of order in human affairs, vanishes altogether.

So far as the other norms of the natural law (ius naturale permissivum vel praecipiens) are concerned, the positive law is free in its efforts to give effect to these precepts. For in this case questions of national character, suitableness of means, circumstances, and forms of government are decisive. Here, in other words, the prudence of the lawmaker is the decisive factor. This prudent reserve of the traditional natural law (ius naturale perenne) also implies that there are no points of irreconcilable opposition between the natural law and the historical school of law: the two can and should complement each other.

Some examples may serve to illustrate this. The institution of private property is at the very least in accordance with the natural law. But this does not mean that severe restrictions on the use of property, or even expropriations for reasons of general welfare, are absolutely contrary to the natural law. Nor does it mean that the Roman law idea of property or the feudalist or capitalist systems of ownership pertain to the natural law. It involves merely the directive to the lawmaker to fashion the actual order of ownership in such a way that property may here and now be qualified to perform (for the individual person, for the family in general, and for most of the members of the nation) its natural-law social function in keeping with the national character and the stage of economic development. The property system of private capitalism with its unrestrained freedom of ownership, with its mobilization of all real property, with its tendency toward giant corporations and trusts, and with its division of each people into a relatively few “haves” and a great many “have-nots,” has been for a long time in no position to perform this function. Taking their stand on the natural law, and often enough in prophetic loneliness, Catholic social reformers since Bishop von Ketteler (1811–77), and even since the romantic movement, have been making this clear in their struggle against economic liberalism. They have also been at pains to point out that the liberty of the propertyless is largely a fiction. To save the family they have demonstrated its right to property as a material substratum of its biological and moral existence. Furthermore, it was owing to its individualism that the Roman people fashioned its positive institutions of property along individualist lines. It was in accordance with the corporative spirit of the German people, however, to fashion in Germanic law a substantially different system of property, one which imposed heavy obligations upon owners, and included specific forms of joint ownership (e.g., in the apportionment of the returns of property among many joint claimants), and especially to treat personal and real property according to separate forms. Hence Bishop von Ketteler, the adherent of natural law, in his proposals for social reform significantly called for the restoration of Germanic law. The positive institutions of property do not have the character of something holy. On the contrary, the common good requires of the lawmaker that he prudently introduce changes into the system of property and adapt it to new economic conditions. A complex commercial and industrial economy obviously calls for a different system of property than is required by a simple natural economy.

The rationalist school of natural law had inferred from its own view of natural law that either absolute monarchy or pure democracy, according to the preferences of the writers and the supposed needs or trends of the times, is alone authorized by natural law. The older natural-law doctrine had never advocated sharply defined ideal governments of this sort. Its ideal government was the system of mixed government, which in any event included the participation of the people.10 St. Thomas holds that the constitution must be suited to the character of the people and to its moral vigor. An earnest, moderate, and responsible people which cherishes the general welfare may with full right govern itself through republican institutions and freely elected officials. Here indeed the natural-law principle, salus populi (taken concretely in the sense of an individual people in its historical peculiarity) suprema lex, is valid, and not the positivist axiom which declares that the will of the prince is the supreme law. Thus the Christian natural law has never indulged in the mania for deduction which characterized rationalism. On the contrary, it has been able to take into account the peculiarity of individual peoples and their legal genius, the course of their historical development, and their economic evolution. For only the eternal structural laws of the social life of man as such are of natural law, not the concrete architectural form. The stylistic variation of the art-forms of individual peoples is no disproof of the eternal laws of beauty in art.

The natural law calls, then, for the positive law. This explains why the natural law, though it is the enduring basis and norm of the positive law, progressively withdraws, as it were, behind the curtain of the positive law as the latter achieves a continually greater perfection. This is also why the natural law reappears whenever the positive law is transformed into objective injustice through the evolution and play of vital forces and the functional changes of communities.

For the same reason the practical jurist is generally satisfied with the theory and exclusive application of the positive law. “Our quarrel does not turn on the thing, but on a word: on the meaning in which we use the word ‘law.’ We term law only the positive norm which emanates from the will of the state. What you call natural law we consider ethics, the moral foundations of law which we also acknowledge” (H. Ermann). Natural law is viewed simply as non-applicable law, as devoid of force in the legal sense. But such a view is altogether inadequate. In the first place, it mistakenly presupposes the completeness of (the lack of gaps in) the positive law. Next, it does not square with all legal systems. It stems rather from a politico-legal conviction that, since the judge is bound to apply the positive law, he should not meddle with the function of the legislator whose express duty it is to realize justice. In states where judicial supremacy prevails (in ancient Rome, in medieval German law, in countries of the Anglo-Saxon common law)13 the judges’ ruling is directly creative of law. Certainly these judges appealed and still appeal precisely to the natural law or natural justice. Finally, as has already been indicated, even the positive law frequently refers to the natural law, especially under the form of equity.

It seems that, with regard to the matter of validity, two things have to be distinguished: the validity of law which is related to the order of mere existence (practical and historical factuality) and the validity of law which is related to the order of essence (the metaphysical order). The positive law has validity to the extent that it is promulgated by the duly constituted lawmaker as his factual will. The natural law has validity independently of its embodiment in a factual volitional act. It is thereby valid at least for the lawmaker. Whether and to what extent it binds the judge or has validity for him is more a question of the constitution of the state: it depends rather upon the public-law principle of the division of powers. According to this principle the judge, i.e., the judicial power, has only to apply the laws or the law of the land. Yet it would be decidedly narrow and illogical to exclude natural law from the laws, and to contend that only such laws are meant as are duly enacted in conformity with the formal legislative procedure established by the constitution without any regard to matter and content, to what is intrinsically just or unjust, i.e., without regard to the natural law. Under constitutional government bulwarked by a bill of rights there exists indeed a strong presumption of law and of right that all laws enacted in keeping with constitutional procedure are not out of harmony with the natural law. It is from this assumption that such laws derive not only their factual enforceability but also their ultimate validity before conscience. Nevertheless this presumption is precisely what it means, a practical device which in particular circumstances does not exclude the duty of the judge to invalidate or not to apply a certain positive law which is clearly at variance with the natural law. In any event the prohibitive precepts of the natural law bind even the judge.

Under constitutional, free government with the added safeguard of a bill of rights there thus exists a strong presumption that the positive law is a determination and derivation of the natural law. For this reason and also because of the consequent de facto legal peace, which enables and permits men to accept without further scrutiny the order of positive law, the idea of natural law remains as it were latent. But it makes itself felt whenever the positive law, in itself or in the eyes of a large number of people, appears to be in conflict with the natural law. Then the primordial rights of the person, the family, and the national group stand forth with elemental force against the power of the state, which develops into tyranny by denying the foundations of political community, its own moral root: the natural law. But this is juridically permissible and can meet with ethical approval only if the natural law is real, valid law; otherwise such disobedience toward the positive law could not be approved of. If the old distinction between unlawful sedition and justifiable resistance to the power of the state (i.e., revolution)—a distinction which played such a vital role in medieval legal thought in the form of the common subjection of people and ruler to the law —has progressively disappeared in the modern age, this is due to several factors. First, the people take an increasingly greater part in the development of the positive law, in lawmaking as well as in administering and applying the law. Thus is produced a greater unity of law with the spirit of the people. Secondly, interpretation of the written law in accordance with justice and equity is achieved through the ethos of the true judge. Lastly, the world of positive law has been progressively penetrated by the principles and prestige of Christian ethics.

"Природне право: Освіта в правовій та соціальній історії та філософії" Генріх Rommen

Сутність права

Можна сказати, з деяким перебільшенням сказати, що епоха індивідуалізму був першим проводити філософії права або права (у суб'єктивному змісті), в той час попередніх років були досить розвиненою філософії права. Це було б особливо виправданим було мислиться як право більш суб'єктивним дозвіл і право вимагати, і закон об'єктивного порядку та основи права та обов'язки. Суум б то бути першим, в той час як норма, через які Суум будуть визначені і гарантовані, прийде пізніше.

Християнське вчення про природне право, однак, не перша постулювати Суум і обличчя, і тільки потім права. Але, як спільнота сприймається одночасно з людиною, тому що це "дано" з останнього, так що норма, яка визначає це одночасно покладено з Суум. Людина постійно розглядатися в порядку, який одночасно дано, чиї фізичні закони, що випливають з характеру істотно порядку, вимагають дотримання. Таким чином, оскільки мислителі не рушили з ізольованих, абстрактного індивіда і не почала питати що слід вважати його невід'ємних прав, але завжди вважав людину як члена порядку встановлені Богом і проявляється в чоловічому сутнісного буття, увагу було приділено більше права, прямо в ціль sense.1 Крім того, той, хто вважає, що закон і мораль не може бути відділений, і, отже, позитивне право і моральний закон пов'язані один з одним, буде особливо здатних оцінити цю точку зору . Закони є, то етичні цілі, ні кінця. Вони не просто захист або охорона раніше даного права. Вони, крім того, позитивні етичні функції прийняття чоловіків краще, більш доброчесними. Але це означає, що позитивне право внутрішньо пов'язаний з об'єктом, який моральний закон має на увазі.

‡ У святого Фоми Аквінського знайдемо спочатку повністю загальної концепції закону. "Закон правило і захід діє, коли людина змушена діяти або утриматися від дії" 2. Це правило або закон повинен, а не сліпий необхідності. Він застосовується у відношенні істоти мають свободу волі в той час як він залишає їх волі без змін. Це не фізичний примус. (Отже, закони, встановлені для руху-Motus, а не об'єктивної-ірраціональної природи, закони природи в сучасному розумінні фрази, закони тільки в неналежній сенсі.) Закон, таким чином, нормою для людських дій, які виходити з вільної волі, і тому дії істота, яка є майстром своєї справи і бездіяльність, на істоту, яку людина. Але вільна воля припускає причини, у відповідності з пріоритетом останніх. Отже, вона відноситься до природи людських дій, які вони так чи інакше визначаються причини і знаходяться у згоді з нею. Таким чином, природа, і, більш явно, раціонального природокористування, яка забезпечує уточнений критерій при переході рішення значення на специфічно людських (морально безкоштовно) дії. Але причина, як практичний розум, далі регулює дії, оскільки він побоюється, що зв'язки і відносини упорядкованих речі між собою і в зв'язку з їх боку, тому що порядок виникає через загальний напрямок до кінця. Знову ж таки, вся дія відбувається заради кінця. Без мети, дія не матиме сенсу, без мети, буде нічого прагнути. Але причина одна можете зрозуміти доцільність дій для досягнення мети, тільки вона може собі засоби і ряд проміжних решт, привести до досягнення кінцевої мети. Ця діяльність розуму, через своє рішення за чи проти запропонованого курсу дій, передує буде, конвертація обговорення та вирішення в дію. Зміст кожної норми, тому, а також все, що в будь-якому випадку нормативний характер, пов'язана з причиною, як сутність і як принцип knowledge.3

З вищевикладеного випливає, що закон "щось, що відносяться до причини." 4 Для поняття закону належить "таїнство розуму", 5 не (як це іноді думки) постанову з причини, хоча законом це занадто. Для закон не говорити, щоб сліпі як такої, а й буде керуватися і повідомив причину.

Людина діє на кінці. Тому кожна дія має безпосередній мети. Очевидно, однак, що негайне припинення, наприклад, лист, підпорядкований як засіб для вищої мети, наприклад, вираження думок. Все більш широке дослідження проливає світло кінцевою метою, до якої підлеглі кінці пов'язані з кінцевою причиною. Їхнє ставлення до кінцевому рахунку, буде те, що є загальним для них усіх. Він відноситься до природи права служити вищої мети, що є кінцевою у відповідному порядку. Мета або кінець творчого елементу в закон і право. Остаточний кінець всіх людських дій і в той же час принцип такі дії Фелісітас, happiness.6 Але універсальність відноситься до цієї мети: це загальне благо всіх, хто прагне до неї. У цьому сенсі закон спрямований на загальне благо в загальному сенсі, з якого вона отримує властивість універсальності. Закон, таким чином, загальна норма про причину, яка спрямовує дії вільної людини в загальне благо, а не приватного або конкретного good.7 Це не може бути обмежена у загальний добробут держави, хоча це його черга програми, але справедливо для кожного вищого спільноти з кінця своєї власної, зокрема, для Церкви і міжнародного співтовариства, але і для сімей і великих родинних груп.