Introduction:
The natural law is the imperative law, the law that is universal, the divine law, the moral law, the law of God, the unwritten law, which has come forth from human reason. Morality, justice, ethics, right reason, good behavior, equality, freedom, liberty, social justice, democracy are synonyms of natural law. The Natural School of Jurisprudence is an important school of thought that tries to study law from a philosophical, abstract, and ideal point of view in relation to nature, God, reason, or conscience. All this is outside and is independent of human power, control or authority. This is an ideal term that explains what is right or wrong. It focuses on justice to improve people. It rejects any unjust law that supports morality, which is a rational basis for moral judgment.
Natural law should therefore not be seen as a product of the imagination. Natural law is binding on everyone in all states or territories, and no human right is valid at any time if it contradicts it. It has always been dominant in the human world to this day. It used to be reflected in the areas of ethics, politics, religion, or supernatural issues, while more recently it was an undeniable weapon of modern political and legal ideologies.
Overview and Importance
The importance of natural jurisprudence was highlighted in four different periods by different jurists and philosophers. The ancient theories were characterized by Greek thinkers like Socrates, Aristotle, and Stoics while the medieval period saw the ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas giving a direction to the natural school. Third was the renaissance period which exposed the theories of philosophers like Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, and Kant. Fourthly, the modern period saw the rise of thoughts of Kohler, Stammler, Hart, and Fuller.
In this article, we shall briefly go through the first two periods of development in this jurisprudence which are believed by jurists to be the defining foundation of the school.
- Ancient Period
Stoics said that that people are governed by laws and customs but applied partly. So, natural law is the right law that is universal in characteristic and non-amendable. His definitions were governed by principles of honesty, sincerity, justice, and universality. Similar ideas were promulgated in Greece by Socrates and Aristotle. According to them in the absence of law or rule, human being turns to worse or cruel one. Hence, the law is necessary for the goodness of society. For him, if there is law in society there is goodness/ humanity. Because of universality nature of natural law, it is inherent in nature. For the purpose of maintaining local justice, manmade law is accepted. Moreover, Aristotle classified justice as distributive and commutative.
- Medieval Period
According to Aquinas, the entire world is subject to the law enacted by the will or order of God. Eternal law is the true law. Thomas Aquinas divided the laws into four categories, such as the Eternal Law as the Law of God’s Spirit, the Divine Law as the Law of Scripture, the Natural Lawfully revealing human reason, and human law as determined by the authority. Rationalism and idealism are based on the eternal law, the supreme law. Lex Naturalist was the principle supporting natural law. Through the act of reason, people participate in the eternal law and in the divine law. Therefore, they have the strength or quality to distinguish between good and evil.
Criticism
The core of the theory of natural law is the idea that everything that exists has a “nature” that gives everything that exists a purpose in life, and all this nature is somehow connected, so that everything that exists is somehow connected to other existing things. Specifically, for humans, the theory of natural law adds the idea that the human mind is able to identify the way of life that makes man live according to its nature. In essence, it is said that if a man uses his mind, he will find the natural way of life, and then if he leads his life according to his nature, he will fulfill the purpose and purpose of his life; Therefore, you experience happiness in life.
So, what the theory of natural law effectively says is that the human mind can find the purpose that gave the creator of life simply by looking at the natural tendencies of creation. This idea clearly assumes that the satisfaction of the natural tendencies of creation is the purpose for which the Creator created existence. What is the evidence for this? In the absence of disclosure, there is none. The assumption “Because people have natural tendencies, their purpose in life must be to live up to these tendencies” is purely speculative. You can also imagine that the Creator saw the natural tendencies of creation as a test of creation, that the Creator really wants man to abstain from. This, in turn, means that the theory of natural law cannot convince the mind because it lacks a rational argument based on these assumptions.
So, the truth is that if you accept the existence of a creator as a fact, you must accept as a fact that only the creator knows for sure what he meant by his creation. That only He knows with certainty how His creation should continue in his life. Without revelation, as in the information flowing from the creator to the creation, creation can only speculate about all this. The theory of natural law is not consistent internally because its conclusion does not match implicit assumptions.
Conclusion
This is just one of the major criticisms that modern and medieval theorists have arrived at reflecting back on centuries of work in this jurisprudence. While critics are apprehensive of the models presented in this theory, it has garnered its importance as a major school of thought and continues to be a field of active research and application.
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