Home > Samples > Sample Essay “Natural Law vs Positive Law: Human Nature vs Social Justice”

Sample Essay “Natural Law vs Positive Law: Human Nature vs Social Justice”

September 3rd, 2015

law schoolThe very moment the founders of America set foot in the ‘promised land’, they had a detailed plan on what kind of government they would like to set. They were fully aware of the fact that arbitrary power and monarchy were really far from what is called freedom. Keeping that in mind, they decided to found the republican type of government that would be based not on the ‘positive law’, but on the ‘natural’ one.

To make it clear, let us clarify what the ‘natural law’ is. The notion is based on the premise that the rights of the human beings are given by Lord or nature and are absolutely inherent to everyone. As for the ‘positive law’, it begins with the belief that all our rights come from the representatives of the government, the members of the society or the other men. Besides, ‘positive law’ believes that these very rights can be taken back any time. ‘Positive law’ is the concept that social justice is based on. It tends to generate artificial equality by means of force and strict regulations. This in turn conflicts with the human nature. In other words, any law that has been created by a human being will always go against the ‘natural law’ that originally comes from the human nature.

With vivid memories about the sufferings and pain caused by European monarchs, the USA founders created a government with the foundation made of ‘natural law’. Thus, they had an oopportunity to establish Constitution recognizing that human beings are free to exercise their natural rights. Moreover, one of the first purposes of the US government was to keep the natural rights under solid protection. The Constitution was the very tool that prevented the representatives of the government from trampling natural rights in order to reach their money-oriented goals.

In ‘positive law’, it is the government representatives that decide what is right and what is wrong, and who should be the one to blame. This is where our rights are at risk and the things are usually go all wrong since the nature of human beings is absolutely inherent.

Now we can talk more precisely about the ‘natural law’ requirements. The only case when it curtails people’s rights is when these people violate natural rights of the others. When the situation occurs, the so-called due process is used in order to set the most reasonable punishment.  But the problem is that in a society, where routine is based on ‘positive law’, the government may deprive the guilty individuals of their liberty, property and even rights to reach some greater social needs. That’s what we see in our everyday life, all over the globe. The governments take away our freedom in the name of some phantom ‘social justice’, which is non-constitutional.

More than once, the Progressives made an effort to go back to the old ideals of the founders in order to guarantee equality as well as social justice by means of the law force. However it goes against the ‘natural law’ principles. While we all are created equal, we are not going to equally achieve. Taking away something from one individual in order to create the so-called ‘equity’ means to cause a real warfare between classes as well as undermine human’s liberty.

Categories: Samples Tags:
Comments are closed.