scholarly journals Legal Morality in Fullerian Jurisprudence

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 151-169
Author(s):  
Hemin Ibrahim Qadir ◽  
Najmadeen Ahmed Muhamad

The American legal philosopher Lon L. Fuller profoundly advanced a sophisticated morality conception of law through his argument for thesis of Legal Morality (LM).  In particular, he adumbrated a novelist idea of “ internal morality of law” that would enable the transformation of the sophisticated morality conception of law into a conception idea of law and morality connection while simultaneously providing an explanation of the new and fresh thesis of legal morality. Contrary to the common (and mostly legal positivism) view, Fuller argues that it is not only the case that the (external) morality determines what the level of any connection between law and morality, rather it is also the idea of law in itself regenerates the idea of morality (internally). However, it is argued that in spite of the fact that Fuller suggested a sophisticated account of interconnection between law and morality, he fails to develop the complexities of the (morality) connection to the law in systemic way. What does he miss in his argument of the connection between law and morality? This study will advance the view that there are more than one way to make a connection between law and morality. Some of these connections can be named here: the morality of duty, the morality of legal subject, the morality of legal official, the morality of legal end, the morality of legal content and the internal and external morality of law. This study argues that each type of these connections between law and morality importantly has many effective outcomes in term of conception and implication of law, which Fuller did not tell us. In Fuller’s work, one can grasp the soundness of this connection in a variety levels. Yet, surprisingly to Fuller’s own works, this study will show that Fuller’s thesis of legal molarity must be expanded and justified on the different ground. In doing so, this study argues not only to make sense of Fuller’s legal morality, but it also redirects the systemic way to bring all pieces of Fuller’s claim of legal morality together and to seek the rationality beyond the legal.

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 71
Author(s):  
V. Yu. Perov ◽  
A. D. Sevastianova

The law and morality the interrelation issue has been the subject for many discussions, recent works in the philosophy field and law ethics of renowned authors as H. Hart, L. Fuller and J. Finnis, who contributed significantly to the topic. The key question about the moral content of law is examined within the polemics between theorists of legal positivism and natural law legal theorists. This article touches upon this issue by the example of the concept of John Finnis, one of the most brilliant contemporary law philosophers, his neo-naturalistic concept of natural law includes some ideas of modern positivism. J. Finnis claims natural law appears as a set of principles of practical reasonableness for the ordering of human life and the human community. Law acts as a method to ensure “the common good” of the community and is based on seven self-evident, as he believes the basic human goods necessary for the human flourishing. The requirements of practical reasonableness compose the content of natural law, contain recommendations on how to carry out these self-evident goods. For Finnis, the aim of law is to provide conditions, according to the requirements of practical reasonableness, in which these seven goods can be realized. It is outlined that J. Finnis regards law as a social institute which purpose is to regulate human affairs, and thus to promote the creation of a community where everyone could realize the seven fundamental goods for humankind.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-61
Author(s):  
Dian Latifiani ◽  
Raden Muhammad Arvy Ilyasa

Moral values in legal science are important. However, the flow of law sees a variety of moral values. This paper aims to see the position of moral values in the science of law. Legal positivism separates strictly between law and morals. According to him, there is no law other than the command of the authorities. Even extreme identifying the law (Recht) as the law (wet). Legal positivism activities are aimed at concrete problems, which are different when compared to natural law thinking which engages itself with the validation of man-made law. For adherents of natural law theory, an unjust law is not law. there is an absolute relationship between law and morality. the two cannot be separated, so the law must refer to moral principles.


Author(s):  
David Copp

Legal Teleology seeks to embrace and to ground the most plausible tenets of both legal positivism and natural law theory. It is compatible with the positivist view that law consists at root in a social practice of a certain kind. Yet it also can accommodate at least some claims about the relation between law and morality that are advocated by opponents of positivism. Most important, it argues that law is “robustly normative”—roughly, law is a source of genuine reasons. Standard forms of positivism cannot account for this thesis, but, arguably, the central doctrines of positivism are compatible with it. Legal Teleology is an account of the normativity of law that is supported by “pluralist-teleology,” a naturalist account of normativity that has been proposed elsewhere (Copp 2009). Legal Teleology sees the law as having a purpose, and it says that law is defective insofar as it does not further that purpose. It agrees that jurists can sometimes help law better to serve its purpose when they invoke moral principles in interpreting law. Legal Teleology represents a kind of intermarriage between legal positivism and natural law theory.


A late-comer to the field of private law theory, the inquiry into the foundations of the law of Equity raises some fundamental questions about the relationships between law and morality, the nature of rights, the extent to which we are willing to compromise on the Rule of Law ideal in order to achieve various social goals. In this volume, leading scholars in the field address these and the questions about underlying principles of Equity and its relationship to the common law: What relationships, if any, are there between the legal, philosophical, and moral senses of ‘equity’? Does Equity form a second-order constraint on law? If so, is its operation at odds with the rule of law? Do the various theories of Equity require some kind of separation of law and equity—and, if they do, what kind of separation? The volume further sheds light on some of the most topical questions of jurisprudence that are embedded in the debate around ‘fusion’.


1976 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 321-334 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morris S. Arnold

We are all familiar with the paradox that while medieval English society set great store in promises and their performance, the law of its central courts paid them little attention. The marital arrangement, which could be undone only rarely; the system we have learned to call feudalism, infidelity to which was sometimes called felony; the heavy emphasis in medieval literature on keeping faith: all these support the proposition that an important tenet of medieval morality was that promises ought to be kept. Yet the common law of promises was curiously retarded, thus creating what seems an odd gap between law and morality.


1979 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 643-670
Author(s):  
Gerald J. Postema

A central tenet of modern Legal Positivism is the claim that “the existence of the law is one thing, its merit or demerit another.” I shall call this “the Positivist dictum.” Jeremy Bentham, the first and perhaps the greatest of the English Positivists, announced this doctrine in his early Fragment on Government, when he distinguished the “Expositor” of the law—who “explains what the law is” and “shows what the Legislator and Judge have done” — from the “Censor” — who instructs us in “what the law ought to be.”


2018 ◽  
pp. 27-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. D. Kurz

The paper celebrates Karl Marx’ 200th birthday in terms of a critical discussion of the “law of value” and the idea that “abstract labour”, and not any use value, is the common third of any two commodities that exchange for one another in a given proportion. It is argued that this view is difficult to sustain. It is also the source of the wretched and unnecessary “transformation problem”. Ironically, as Piero Sraffa has shown, prices of production and the general rate of profits are fully determined in terms of the same set of data from which Marx started his analysis.


Author(s):  
Eva Steiner

This chapter examines the law of contract in France and discusses the milestone reform of French contract law. While this new legislation introduces a fresh equilibrium between the contracting parties and enhances accessibility and legal certainty in contract, it does not radically change the state of the law in this area. In addition, it does not strongly impact the traditional philosophical foundations of the law of contract. The reform, in short, looks more like a tidying up operation rather than a far-reaching transformation of the law. Therefore, the chapter argues that it is questionable whether the new law, which was also intended to increase France's attractiveness against the background of a world market dominated by the Common Law, will keep its promise.


Author(s):  
Corrado Roversi

Are legal institutions artifacts? If artifacts are conceived as entities whose existence depends on human beings, then yes, legal institutions are, of course, artifacts. But an artifact theory of law makes a stronger claim, namely, that there is actually an explanatory gain to be had by investigating legal institutions as artifacts, or through the features of ordinary artifacts. This is the proposition explored in this chapter: that while this understanding of legal institutions makes it possible to find common ground between legal positivism and legal realism, it does not capture all of the insights offered by these two traditions. An artifact theory of law can therefore be necessary in explaining the law, but it will not suffice to that end. This chapter also posits that legal artifacts bear a relevant connection to certain conceptions of nature, thus vindicating one of the original insights behind natural law theory.


Author(s):  
Molly Shaffer Van Houweling

This chapter studies intellectual property (IP). A hallmark of the New Private Law (NPL) is attentiveness to and appreciation of legal concepts and categories, including the traditional categories of the common law. These categories can sometimes usefully be deployed outside of the traditional common law, to characterize, conceptualize, and critique other bodies of law. For scholars interested in IP, for example, common law categories can be used to describe patent, copyright, trademark, and other fields of IP as more or less “property-like” or “tort-like.” Thischapter investigates both the property- and tort-like features of IP to understand the circumstances under which one set of features tends to dominate and why. It surveys several doctrines within the law of copyright that demonstrate how courts move along the property/tort continuum depending on the nature of the copyrighted work at issue—including, in particular, how well the work’s protected contours are defined. This conceptual navigation is familiar, echoing how common law courts have moved along the property/tort continuum to address disputes over distinctive types of tangible resources.


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