PLATO -LAW as the oppotiorment of reason (apprehension of reality) 3 Classes of STATE-the wise to dominate; warriors to depend the social

to dominate; warriors to depend the social organisms; the artisans and

LAW is the discovery of reality. farmers who must feed it. He has always insisted upon the proposition that it is better for the
STATE as the most perfect unit dominates all human activity and must promote good in any unwise, whether they consent or not, to be ruled by the wise.
form.
A whole form of various individuals and solidly built, as a body is formed of several organs, which MENO (VIRTUE )
together make its life possible. 1. Is relative to the sort of person in question.
JUSTICE is the virtue par excellence, insofar as it consists in a harmonic relation between the various 2. Is the ability to rule men.
parts of a whole. It requires that each one do his part, in relation to the common purpose. 3. Is the desire to have and the ability to acquire fine and beautiful things.
PLATO CAN VIRTUE BE TAUGHT?
LAW as the rules according to which the magistrates should administer the state, and proceed the Virtue is something beneficial.
offenders. All good things are only good if they are accompanied by knowledge or wisdom.
LAW itself is a kind of contract. However, the LAW is much more than a contract, that when the Therefore, virtue is a kind of knowledge and can be taught.
STATE do not pay attention to virtue, the community becomes merely an alliance. EUTHYPRO (PROSECUTION)
STATE is a community of persons. Regulates the lives of the citizens by means of laws. Holiness is persecuting religious offenders.
All supreme good is happiness, the product of virtue. What is holy is what is agreeable to the gods.
Happiness as an exercise of the powers of life in accordance with the virtue throughout the whole What is holy is what is approved by the gods.
life-time Holiness is a kind of justice, specifically that kind which is concerned with looking after the gods.
Virtue is essential for happiness or good character Holiness is a kind of trading with the gods,
(self-fulfillment or good life) where we give them sacrifices and they grant our prayers.
PLATO ARISTOTLE
1. Knowledge is virtue 1. Knowing the good is not enough SOCRATIC METHOD
2. Virtues boil down to wisdom 2. Wisdom is the highest form of virtue, it is by Only wants short answers that address very specific points and refuses to move on to more
3. Virtue is sufficient for happiness no means the key to possessing all virtues advanced or complicated topics until an adequate understanding of basic principles is
--- there is no such thing as moral luck 3. Virtue is necessary to the good life, it isn't achieved.
sufficient ULTIMATE GOAL-increase understanding through inquiry.
SOCRATIC EFFECT-provide the respondent with the opportunity to rethink, or whatever
PLATONIC CONCEPT OF NATURAL LAW other quality or idea is in focus, after having their previously existing ideas discarded with
LAW is the discovery of reality-the moral value of law increases as it approximates the ideal law their full agreement on the basis of their own answers to questions.
which exists in the world is reality (as power, that anything has real existence if it has inherent in it CLASSIC SOCRATIC METHOD(deconstructive)-uses creative questioning to dismantle and
power of being affected or affecting others, no matter how small.) discard preexisting ideas and thereby allows the respondent to rethink the primary question
The end of the LAW is to produce men who are completely good. under discussion.
Parts/Faculties exist in the soul of the individual-reason which dominates; courage which acts; sense MODERN SOCRATIC METHOD(constructive)-is a process of questioning used to successfully
which obeys. lead a person to knowledge through small steps.
 SOCRATIC METHOD IN LAW SCHOOL-Law Students are exposed to very intense type of questioning
for him to break down and force himself to dig deeper and perform better. The purpose of this style
of questioning is to prepare students for the extremely rough environment of courtroom litigation
Law is the highest reason, implanted in nature, which commands what ought to be done and
forbids the opposite.
The origin of Justice is to be found in Law, for Law is a natural force; it is the mind and reason of the
intelligent man, the standard by which Justice and Injustice are measured. Reason when perfected is
rightly called wisdom.
Human beings, by nature have reason, that reason enables us to discover the principles of justice,
and that justice gives us law.
Invention of Latin philosophical vocabulary.
ROMAN JURIST CICERO
Law is the highest reason, implanted in nature, which commands what ought to be done and
forbids the opposite.
The origin of Justice is to be found in Law, for Law is a natural force; it is the mind and reason of the
intelligent man, the standard by which Justice and Injustice are measured. Reason when perfected is
rightly called wisdom.
Human beings, by nature have reason, that reason enables us to discover the principles of justice,
and that justice gives us law.
Invention of Latin philosophical vocabulary.
CONCEPT OF LAW ACCORDING TO ST. THOMAS AUINAS
Thomism recognizes four different species of law which he defines as
"an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community, and
promulgated
1. Eternal law - which is "the type of Divine Wisdom, as directing all actions and movements;
2. Divine law- which are moral imperatives specifically given through revelation.
3. Natural law - "whereby each one knows, and is conscious of, what is good and what is evil," which
is the rational being's participation in the eternal law
4. Human or temporal law - laws made by humans by necessity.
According to Plato, we live in an orderly universe. The basis of this orderly universe or nature are
the forms, most fundamentally the Form of the Good, which Plato describes as "the brightest region
of Being". The Form of the Good is the cause of all things, and when it is seen it leads a person to act
wisely.
Aristotle notes that natural justice is a species of political justice, specifically the scheme of
distributive and corrective justice that would be established under the best political community;
were this to take the form of law, this could be called a natural law.
St. Aquinas grounds his theory of natural law in the notion of an eternal law (in God). Aquinas
distinguishes different levels of precepts or commands that the Natural Law entails. The most
universal is the command "Good is to be done and pursued and evil avoided." This applies to
everything and everyone, so much so that some consider it to be more of a description or definition
of what we mean by "good.
EMANUEL KANT RANSCENDAL PHILOPSHY
To Immanuel Kant, it is the investigation on the conditions of possibility of something e.g., of
knowledge, that is the form of knowledge.
By examining the transcendental approaches of the conditions of knowledge previous (a priori) to
any experience of the subject, metaphysics, as a fundamental and universal theory, turn out to be
an epistemology.
Transcendental philosophy, consequently, is not considered a traditional ontological form of
metaphysics.
Immanuel Kant, the first to coin the term, laid the groundwork in the Critique of Pure Reason to the
edification of a transcendental philosophy.
He defines the general problem of this philosophy by the question
"how synthetic a priori judgments are possible?"
While the Critique of Pure Reason provides an analysis only of the "fundamental concepts", a full
transcendental philosophy would require "an exhaustive analysis of all of human cognition a priori.
The categorical imperative only expresses generally what constitutes Obligation. It may be rendered
by the following Formula: Act according to a Maxim which can be adopted at the same time as a
Universal Law.
Actions must therefore be considered, in the first place, according to their subjective Principle; but
whether this principle is also valid objectively, can only be known by the criterion of the Categorical
Imperative.
Examples: Do not KILL, Do not SteaL, Obey your parents
THEORY OF LAW AND THE STATE OF HEGEL Law: Existence of free will, in other words, it is liberty HOLMES ---- The law is what the court decides
which establishes itself externally. It is the external existence of liberty. Placed the judge in the centre instead of statutory legislation
State: The highest degree of the objective spirit. It is the spirit which awakens, while in nature it Prepared the ground for a more skeptical approach of the law, which further laid the ground
appears to sleep. It is the supreme manifestation of Liberty. Above the State there is but the for Oliver Wendell Holmes empirical definition of law
absolute. LEGAL REALISM
Realism per se is the attribute of accepting the facts of life and favoring practicality and
DIALECTAL THEORY OF HEGEL The absolute, the idea, becomes through contradictions, contrast, literal truth.
the fluctuations of battle. (Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis) The Anti-thesis of legal idealism theory
As reality is essentially development, movement, so also the system of concepts must be mobile , sciences of the real - denounces traditional legal rules and concepts
composed of thoughts in movement. Law is not a species of rules
some deny the reality of legal rules
In his definition of the state, Hegel implies that it is the supreme manifestation of Liberty. Above the all deny the importance of rules in understanding the law as it is actually applied
state there is only the absolute. Following this, it is further implied that the States are in a condition Legal Realism has sometimes been Rule Skepticism
of equality with no human jurisdiction over them. Conflicts between states therefore will have to be HOW LAW IS DETERMINED UNDER THE REALIST SCHOOL
regulated in final analysis by war which is a sort of divine Judgment. As Hegel quotes, The History of Law is determined under the realist school as:
the world is the tribunal of the world. That is, peoples receive in history their just sentence.
system of reason
THE REALIST SCHOOL deduction from principles of ethics or admitted axioms
In legal philosophy A theory of law and legal reasoning logical structure of the law
influence of social forces
Legal science proper and opposed to natural law traditions
Take the fundamental question, why constitutes lawYou will find some text writers telling you
This theory postulates that law is based, not on formal rules or principles, but instead on
that it is a system of reason, that it is a deduction from principles of ethics or admitted actions, or
judicial decisions that should derive from social interests and public policy.
what not, which may coincide with the decision . But if we take the view of our friend, the bad man,
Defines law as a generalized prediction of what courts would do
we shall find that he does not care two straws for the action or deduction, but that does want to
No importance is given to legislature-enacted laws; only a judge-made law is upheld as
know why Massachusetts or english courts are likely to do in fact. i am much of his mind. the
genuine.
prophecies of what the courts will do in fact and nothing more pretentious are what i mean by the
Studies law as it is in its actual working and its effects, investigate the realities of modern
law
society in their relation to modern law.
FACTORS TO DETERMINE REAL LAW
JOHN OLIVER WENDELL
To determine the real law under realist school, facts should be passed by a court. Law is framed in
Law simply consists of the decisions of courts and the prediction of them
terms of:
Holmes was inclined to this theory because he thought it
1. Premises
followed once one looked at the law non-normatively
2. Concepts
that is, one rejected to idea of legal obligation
3. Principles drawn from religious,philosophical and metaphysical thinking of the past
Bad Man Theory
centuries.
Gave credence to the role of extra-legal factors in judicial decision making
The realists trace their intellectual ancestry to the skepticism of Holmes J. Pound. skepticism is ADVANTAGES
regarded as having seen the truth but as having failed to apply it effectively to jurisprudence. - shows importance to examine what judges are actually doing in deciding cases, not
To understand law we must consider the interrelations between the study of law and other social merely what they say they are doing.
sciences: - Belief in the indeterminacy of law
1. Sociology - Belief in legal instrumentalism
2. Psychology
DISADVNATAGES
3. Politics
- includes possible squashing of individuals right
4. Economics
- advantage of a judges power
5. International relations -

Law is a life of experience because it is considered as the system of reason, distinguish what is right
and wrong and how to reprimand and provide consequence to penalise the wrong actions. It is
made up from the influence of social forces and it involves the understanding of other social
disciplines. As a human being we have our own free will, choice to do what is right,moral and legal.
Some factors may affect our judgement but in the end we must consider the law as our guidelines to
do what is right and just.
IMPORTANCE OF JUDICIAL PERSONALITY
A judge arrives to a decision by a judicial hunch
A judicial hunch is based on the personality of the judge
Stimuli x Judges personality = DECISION
Specific enforceable decisions is the main essence of a lawyers work, and these decisions are the
result of a judges judicial hunches. The so-called legal rules and principles are one of the many
hunch producers and may be the the stimuli to the making of those hunches. Those stimuli must
operate through their effect o what may loosely be described as the judges personality.

LEFT WING OF POSITIVIST SCHOOL

Realist school of thought is considered to be left wing, because the realist school of thought tends to
be logical and more brutal, an equal line of thought, and also is a concern for fact or reality and
rejection of the impractical and visionary. While the positivist school is doctrine that states that the
only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge, and that such knowledge can only come from
positive affirmation of theories through strict scientific method.
They share view the law as it is