In this post we are going to take a look at natural law. To start off we are going to look at two different opinions to the question, ‘Why do people make laws?’. Both of these opinions stem from the Ancient Greeks; the first opinion is that of Epicurus, who believed that people made laws to escape the horrible nature of human beings. The second opinion is that of Zeno and the Stoa Poikile, who believed that laws were created in order for people to live justly amongst each other; they believed that you should not just look at who makes the law, but you should look at the content inside.Natural law can be very hard to establish, because the whole idea of a law being ‘just’ is a hard criteria to meet when you consider that everyone has a different opinion on what ‘just’ really means. Natural law should be the same for all of the people, all of the time. The Roman view on natural was that if the same rule is found all over the world, then it must be considered natural law; marriage is a prime example, because marriage is accepted all around the world. The Romans called this the ‘Ius Gentium’, which translates to ‘the law of the people’. This is not however the same as natural law; for instance, slavery would be an example of a law that is part of the ius gentium, as at the time, it was found everywhere, however it is not ius naturale (natural law as referred to by the Romans) because it is not ‘just’.
There are two criteria that must be met in order for a law to be considered natural law; natural law must be rational and it must be equitable and fair. With regard to the second point, it is easier to see it as natural law must not be irrational or unfair, rather than it must be equitable and fair, because the terms ‘equitable’ and ‘fair’ can be deemed subjective.
In order for a law to be deemed as a custom, two requirements must be met; there must be sustained and durable application and there must be an approval of custom by the people. During the Middle Ages, Roman emperor Justinian wanted to ban incest. In order to do this he created a statute which would punish those guilty of incest with a death sentence, however the statute also stated that the children of the offenders must also be killed. The killing of children was against natural law in the Middle Ages, and as such this part of the statute was put aside by the people. Nowadays ‘Human Rights’ are able to put aside manmade laws. Human rights laws are manmade laws, and are therefore not deemed as natural law.
