Professional Documents
Culture Documents
by Rose Cabug & Camille Joyce Lisay Rules of law is a necessary condition for a just
government, but not a sufficient
Discussion questions
1. What are laws? Marxists: Protects private property, social inequality
2. Are laws necessarily moral? and class domination
3. Are laws absolute? Feminists: Biases that favour the interests of men at
4. How do we contend with laws whose the expense of women
contents are problematic? Case in point, Multicultural theorists: Law reflects the values and
death penalty? attitudes of the dominant cultural group and
insensitive to the values and concerns of minority
Laws — means of enforcing norms or standards of groups
social behavior; distinctive social institution
Natural Law and Positive Law
1. Made by the government - reflects the ‘will Law v Morality
of the state’ Law is a distinctive form of social control backed up
2. Compulsory - system of punishment and by means of enforcement whereas morality is
coercion concerned about what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’
3. ‘Public’ quality — consists of published
rules achieved through a formal legislative Natural Law
process conducted by elected officials Humankind should conform to the higher moral
4. Binding - enforced commands embodying principles set out in the doctrine of human rights; the
moral claims purpose of laws is to enforce morality
Justice
● Denotes a particular kind of moral
judgement
● Giving each person what he or she is ‘due’
● No settled of objective concept
● Our concern: the way the law distributes
penalties for wrongdoing, or allocates