I. INTRODUCTION
Brian Tamanaha notes that in Plato’s dialogue, Minos, Socrates identified weaknesses with each view in turn, the one of state law being that some decisions are unjust, unworthy of law. In my view, law as ‘state law’ offers the most compelling account for the paradox that is defining law. The following arguemnts will be premised upon the concepts of an unjust law still technically existing as law and the weaknesses that Socrates identifies for law as social order and law as justice or right as less subjective and more likely to hold true when the philosophy is applied to real situations.
II. STATE LAW
Laws can be good or bad – they cannot retroactively be deemed unfit to be law in the past, only in the present by the offending …show more content…
A consensus, or a mutual universal agreement on what it encompasses, is simply not a realistic possibility. Many of the moral stances of individuals and groups are so adversarial in nature that are mutually incompatible. As a result, the stance of justice or right as law would leave many people not believing that some laws are actually law. Due to the wide variance of views on what constitute justice, in effect, all laws would be considered invalid, as there will always be at least one individual who has a slightly different view than the …show more content…
As Tamaha states: “law is distinct from custom and morality in that it is an institutionalized apparatus that makes a superior claim to maintain normative order through the application of physical force within a territory.” “ Law is not a necessity for society to exist, however social order and moral codes, often enforced by other members of the group, are. “Before this, there was a kind of primordial soup in which custom, morality, and law were indistinguishable.” Until these stringent guidelines for appropriate human behavior are separated from rules regarding custom and morality, they cannot be deemed
Brian Tamanaha notes that in Plato’s dialogue, Minos, Socrates identified weaknesses with each view in turn, the one of state law being that some decisions are unjust, unworthy of law. In my view, law as ‘state law’ offers the most compelling account for the paradox that is defining law. The following arguemnts will be premised upon the concepts of an unjust law still technically existing as law and the weaknesses that Socrates identifies for law as social order and law as justice or right as less subjective and more likely to hold true when the philosophy is applied to real situations.
II. STATE LAW
Laws can be good or bad – they cannot retroactively be deemed unfit to be law in the past, only in the present by the offending …show more content…
A consensus, or a mutual universal agreement on what it encompasses, is simply not a realistic possibility. Many of the moral stances of individuals and groups are so adversarial in nature that are mutually incompatible. As a result, the stance of justice or right as law would leave many people not believing that some laws are actually law. Due to the wide variance of views on what constitute justice, in effect, all laws would be considered invalid, as there will always be at least one individual who has a slightly different view than the …show more content…
As Tamaha states: “law is distinct from custom and morality in that it is an institutionalized apparatus that makes a superior claim to maintain normative order through the application of physical force within a territory.” “ Law is not a necessity for society to exist, however social order and moral codes, often enforced by other members of the group, are. “Before this, there was a kind of primordial soup in which custom, morality, and law were indistinguishable.” Until these stringent guidelines for appropriate human behavior are separated from rules regarding custom and morality, they cannot be deemed