Essay On Moral Truths

Natural theorist asserts that law and morality are deeply connected; it is only through morality that one can understand law. Legal positivists however, although recognizing that both law and morality can be intertwined, are of the view that morality does not have bearing on law. This essay will answer the first part by exploring both subjective and objective moral truth, before arguing in favor of its existence. It will then explore the division between natural and positivist lawyers to provide a better understanding on the bearing it has on law.

Truth/Moral truths?

A truth is a statement which is ‘in accordance with fact or reality’ . Moral truths however, may have more than one definition. For a start, there is a difference between a subjective and objective moral truths. Subjective moral truths are often intertwined with personal opinions/beliefs as certain statements may be true for one but not true for the other depending on the subject, which is the person making the statement. An objective moral truth however, is not one that can differ from one person to another simply because it is a truth which cannot be affected by how one think (by analogy, yes or no, black or white). For example, killing is wrong. In the eyes of the murderer, he/she may subjectively assert that killing is right as it depends on his/her own

A legal system, according to him, does not need to be moral in order to be legitimate. His theory of law is a system of rules involving primary and secondary rules. Primary rules such as Acts of Parliaments, common law, constitutional law facilitates certain behavior while secondary rules are ‘rules about rules’, which determines the validity of legal rules (rules of recognition) as well as allow the modification of it. The rule of recognition is significant as it distinguishes valid rules from non-valid ones without taking into account of