Nature Of Law
My theory of the nature of Law can be encapsulated in the above diagram. Like Finnis, I believe that there are core and peripheral senses of what Law is. The core being that which we accept unequivocally as Law and a periphery as entities that share some characteristics of Law but not fully. This Aristotelian methodology of defining Law was adopted because it is believed that no single definition of Law can fully encompass the rich variety of Laws in society as well as the variety of ways in which it functions.
I agree with Alexy-Radbruch that law that is promulgated and legally valid in the institutional sense is, more often than not, Law. By virtue of fulfilling all the legal validity requirements, a law has an inherent value of legal certainty
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The various factors can also have differing weights depending on the circumstance. For example if a law is manifestly unjust to a small group of people by requiring them to donate substantial amounts of blood every week whether they want to or not. But the law is necessary for the collective good of society as a whole because the blood is the cure for a disease that is wiping out vast numbers of the population. Under this model, the law would be seen as unjust for violating the bodily integrity of a group of people but retain its status as Law because of the greater common good that could result from it.
Unlike the Radbruch-Alexy model, various other factors can be taken into account apart from justice, purposiveness and legal certainty. This reflects the complexity of legal systems and our conception of Law as participants within it. This makes it a more accurate reflection of the social reality.
The blurry edges between the primary, secondary and ‘non-Law’ category indicate that the lines between them are not always clear and it is impossible to draw a fixed decision at the penumbra. Furthermore, the presence of a scale helps too indicate varying degrees of ‘Law’ even within the categories of primary and secondary and non-Law. This is thus a pictorial representation of how qualifying and classifying connections between the three categories could play
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