Schools of Jurisprudence 3.1Natural Law School

A traffic rule can be changed by a notification tomorrow. But almost everyone feels that a law allowing the killing of innocent people would be wrong even if Parliament passed it tomorrow. Where does that feeling come from, and does it have any legal force? Natural law is the oldest answer: there is a standard of right, found through reason and not through legislation, against which every human law can be measured. Every other school in this module is either built on that idea or built in reaction to it.

In two minutes

Natural law holds that there is a higher, rationally knowable moral order, and that a human rule which flagrantly violates it lacks the full authority of law.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Jurisprudence / Legal Theory on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.