Natural Law and Legal Positivism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Natural Law and Legal Positivism - Essay Example Natural law applies to theories of ethics, politics, civil law, and theories of religious morality. Natural law as it applies to the theories of ethics, seeks to establish a definition for features of moral theory as nature dictates them. However, natural law theory does not recount on the history of the natural law development thought. Natural law theory finds its definition in ethics (Murphy 654). Any moral theory that relates to the natural law theory belongs to Aquinas. Every ethics analogy that includes material on natural law theory is definitely by Aquinas. It is therefore arguable that Aquinas natural law theory is the centre stage of a natural law position. The theory of natural law ascribes the origin of law to the supreme God. Natural law is a divine providence that originates from God himself. Natural law is therefore part of the theory of divine providence. At the point of view of human role as a recipient of this God's provision, natural law is a product of the principles of practical rationality (Waluchow 179). These are the principles that set judgment of the human actions either as reasonable or as unreasonable. Natural law is a preeminent of the theory of practical rationality. Practicing natural law is a participation in the eternal law. Eternal law is the rational plan that presents the ordinance of all creation. Therefore, natural law attains its quality as law from this base. The practice of natural law binds naturally. To learn natural law does not call for human methods of instruction (Waluchow 179). Humans learn the precepts of natural law naturally. Natural law judges between good and evil, maintaining that, people should do only good things and avoid the evil ones at all cost. Natural law is unique in itself in that, it does not fall into the contemporary categories for moral theories. On interesting feature of natural law is that, it is hard to tell when an ethics analogy ceases to be a natural! Natural laws are intact and cannot be broken or enforced. On the other hand, legal positivism is the theory that maintains that the existence and the content of law depend sharply on the social facts but not on its merits (George 31). The theory does not state that the law's merits are incomprehensible, insignificant, or marginal to the philosophy of law. It rather discourages the thought that the law's merits can determine whether the law or legal systems exist. The impact of any law in any particular place depends on the social standards that are in recognition as authoritative by the officials of the law. For instance, if the legislature enacts, judicial system decide, or social customs declare an act to be a law, then it becomes a law. According to legal positivism, law is anything that the society in question posits. Therefore, law is a social construction. Law is a command of the sovereign under the support of the force (George 31). However, legal positivism is not a confinement of law. The statement that existence of law depends on facts rather than its merits is a thesis about the relation amid laws, facts and merits, but not a thesis about the individual relata (Waluchow 179). Legal positivism is unique in that, it is not contradictory to natural law's moral doctrines and objective morality set in human nature. In order to

The Retrospect of European Upheaval Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

The Retrospect of European Upheaval - Essay Example Trade developed around a ‘triangle’; from Britain to West Africa taking goods such as Glassware , cloth and ammunition, from West Africa to the Americas carrying enslaved people, and finally from the Americas back to Britain with raw materials such as sugar, tobacco and cotton. This all resulted due to developments in maritime technology as it enabled European sailors to have longer voyage. Enslaved Africans were sold to work on plantations or in the households of the slave owners upon their arrival in America. They grew cash crops – tobacco, sugar, coffee, cocoa – for the European markets. Entrepreneurs on the islands of the Caribbean and in the US depended on slave labour to grow these crops profitably as the labour was cheap. 1500 Africans during the between Spain and Britain war escaped to mountains, evaded capture for 150 years and undertook guerilla warfare against the plantation owners. The French Revolution in 1789 created a new French republic and perturbed Haiti (which was created as a result of Successful rebellion) when the slaves revolted led by the formidable soldier Toussaint L’Ouverture, who himself was once a slave and self educated. He had an army of 100.000 revolts which took control of Spanish Santo Domingo(Now known as Haiti) and freed other slaves. Later on, he agreed to stop fighting if French would abolish the slavery. Mongol Empire, Ottoman Empire, 1453, Sunni Islam When Baghdad fell to Mongols by Slejuks, they declared an independent Sultanate in east and central Asia. Later on the Slejuks were overthrown by Uthman, an Uzbek of the Ottoman clan and proclaimed the Sultan of Asia Minor in 1301. Constantinople, heart of the Byzantine Empire became the capital of the Ottoman Empire when it was conquered in 1453 by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II. Mehmet slaughtered many of the population and forced the rest into exile. The city was repopulated by importing people scattered in Ottoman Territories. He renamed C onstantinople Istanbul – the 'city of Islam' - and embarked for recuperating physically and politically as he made it his capital. Scramble for Africa, Berlin Conference, King Leopold II, Congo Free State In 1884 a meeting was convened at the Berlin residence of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Foreign Ministers from fourteen European Nations and United States promulgated rules for further exploitation of African continent without making the inhabitant’s part of the process. Otto von Bismarck wanted not only to expand German spheres of influence in Africa but had a hidden agenda to play off Germany's colonial rivals against one another to the Germans' advantage. France, Germany, Great Britain, and Portugal were the major players in the conference, controlling most of colonial Africa at the time among the fourteen nations. The French were prevalent in West Africa, while the British had occupied in East and Southern Africa. The Belgians acquired the vast territory which lat er became The Congo. The Germans ruled in 4 colonies which were all across the region. The Portuguese held a small colony in West Africa and two large ones in Southern Africa. Kind Leopold II had coerced the Africans in Congo to gather rubber, illegal killing of elephants for their ivory and to facilitate export routes, infrastructure was build. Those who failed to meet these tasks were massacred. King Leopold regime is regarded as the most excruciating disasters of Africa as 10 million Congolese had been