Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c47g7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T13:20:53.480Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - Ideas of Justice: Natural and Human

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2010

Austin Sarat
Affiliation:
Amherst College, Massachusetts
Matthew Anderson
Affiliation:
University of New England, Maine
Cathrine O. Frank
Affiliation:
University of New England, Maine
Get access

Summary

Although the distinction between natural and human justice – phusis and nomos – structures the foundations of Western political thought, the language and discourse of natural justice, law, right, and so forth have fallen into fairly profound disrepute. Indeed, that disrepute can be extended to the last two or three centuries if we can agree that the Western “discovery” of variation in religious and moral notions across time and place gave rise to a certain skepticism concerning the idea of “natural” or divine justice. Nonetheless, over the last fifty years moral realism and natural law theory have made a comeback in the legal academy. For instance, in the late 1950s, legal positivist H. L. A. Hart entered into a debate with Lon Fuller in the Harvard Law Review, a debate that was eventually joined by Ronald Dworkin concerning the extent to which there is necessarily some kind of “natural” moral content in law. This debate in turn gave rise to an important Thomistic rejoinder – from the likes of Jacques Maritain, Yves Simon, Henry Veatch inter alia – concerning the nature of the relationship between so-called natural law and a lawgiver. Notably, debates about natural law have not been limited to academia. The Natural Law Party has branches in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Israel, New Zealand, and Pakistan. Thus, although nomos seemed to have won out in a historical contest over phusis, the ideas of natural justice and natural law are far from finished.

Type
Chapter
Information
Law and the Humanities
An Introduction
, pp. 141 - 160
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Knud, Haakonessen's Natural Law and Moral Philosophy: From Grotius to the Scottish Enlightenment. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)Google Scholar
Finnis, John, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980)Google Scholar
Moral Reality RevisitedMichigan Law Review 90 (1992): 242–533
Lisska, Anthony J., Aquinas's Theory of Natural Law: An Analytic Reconstruction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996)Google Scholar
George, Robert C., In Defense of Natural Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koons, Robert C., Realism Regained: An Exact Theory of Causation, Teleology, and the Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar
Hook, Sydney, ed. Law and Philosophy (New York: New York University Press, 1964)
George, Robert P., ed. Natural Law Theory: Contemporary Essays (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996)
George, Robert P., Natural Law, Liberalism and Morality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996)Google Scholar
Hart, H. L. A., The Concept of Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961)Google Scholar
Fuller, Lon, The Morality of Law (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969)Google Scholar
Dworkin, RonaldMorality and Law: Observations Prompted by Professor Fuller's ‘Novel’ Claim,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 1965CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kainz, Howard, Natural Law: An Introduction and Reexamination (Chicago: Open Court, 2004) xiiiGoogle Scholar
Steiner, George's Antigone (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984)Google Scholar
Butler, Judith, Antigone's Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998) 2Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund, Civilization and its Discontents (London: Penguin, 2002)Google Scholar
Lacan, Jacques, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, Miller, Jacques Alain, ed., Porter, Dennis, trans. (New York: Norton, 1992) 177Google Scholar
Lacan, Jacques, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979) 59Google Scholar
Zizek, Slavoj, How to Read Lacan (New York: Norton, 2006) 91Google Scholar
Santer, Eric, “Miracles Happen: Benjamin, Rosenzweig, Freud, and the Matter of the Neighbour,' in The Neighbour: Three Inquiries in Political Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006)Google Scholar
Covell, Charles, The Defense of Natural Law (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992) 222–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finnis, John, “Natural Law and Unnatural Acts.” Heythrop Journal 11 (1970)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sophocles, , The Three Theban Plays, Fagles, Robert, trans. (Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1984)Google Scholar
Antigone's Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000)
Aristotle, , On Rhetoric, Kennedy, George A, trans. (New York, Oxford University Press, 1991)Google Scholar
Hegel, 's Natural Law, Knox, T. M. trans., with an introduction by Acton, H. B. (Pittsburgh: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975)Google Scholar
Hegel's Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, Knox, T. M., trans. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977) 215
Hegel's Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, Knox, T. M., trans. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977)
Steiner, George, Antigones (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984)Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques, Glas, Leavey, John P. and Rand, Richard, trans. (Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1990) 151–62Google Scholar
Butler, Judith, Antigone's Claim [New York: Columbia University Press, 2002 86, ff. 14Google Scholar
Lacan, Jacques, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, Miller, Jacques Alain, ed., Porter, Dennis, trans. (New York: Norton, 1992) 280Google Scholar
Lacan, Jacques, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, Miller, Jacques Alain, ed., Porter, Dennis, trans. (New York: Norton, 1992) 280Google Scholar
Zupancic, Alenka, Ethics of the Real (London: Verso, 2000) 257Google Scholar
Agamben, Giorgio, The Time that Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans, Dailey, Patricia, trans. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005)Google Scholar
Johnston, Adrian, “Ghosts of Substance Past: Schelling, Lacan, and the Denaturalization of Nature,” in Lacan: The Silent Partner, Zizek, Slavoj, ed. (London: Verso, 2006) 114Google Scholar
Zizek, Slavoj, How to Read Lacan (New York: Norton, 2006) 46Google Scholar
Wolfe, Christopher, “Judicial Review” in Natural Law and Contemporary Public Policy, Forte, David, ed. (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1998) 157 ffGoogle Scholar
Grisez, 's The Way of the Lord Jesus (Chicago: Fransiscan Herald Press, 1983) 225–6Google Scholar
Zizek, Slavoj in How To Read Lacan (New York: Norton, 2006) 42Google Scholar
Kaniz, Howard P., Natural Law: An Introduction and Re-examination (Chicago: Open Court, 2004) 53Google Scholar
Lefort, Claude, “The Permanence of the Theological-Political” in Political Theologies (New York: Fordham, 2006) 148CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skinner, Quentin, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 Vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978)Google Scholar
Grotius, Hugo, Rights of War and Peace (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2005)Google Scholar
Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, Tuck, R., ed. (Cambridge: 1991), p. 91Google Scholar
Cumberland, Richard, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Laws of Nature and A Confutation of the Elements of Mr. Hobbes' Philosophy in A Treatise of the Laws of Nature, Maxwell, John, trans. (New York: Garland, 1978)Google Scholar
Pufendorf, Samuel, On the Duty of Man and Citizen According to Natural Law (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991)Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel, Metaphysics of Morals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Practical Reason (London and New York: MacMillan, 1993) 72Google Scholar
George, Robert P., In Defense of Natural Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999) 50CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finnis, John, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992) 97Google Scholar
“As the child was once under a compulsion to obey its parents, so the ego submits to the categorical imperative of its superego” in On Metapsychology (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1955) 389
Zupancic, Alenka, Ethics of the Real (London: Verso, 2000) 4Google Scholar
Lacan, Jacques, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, Miller, Jacques Alain, ed., Porter, Dennis, trans. (New York: Norton, 1992) 284Google Scholar
Zupancic, Alenka, Ethics of the Real (London: Verso, 2000) 5Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques, Rogues (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), 157Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×