Natural Law Commons^™

The Natural Duty To Obey The Law, Kent Greenawalt

Michigan Law Review

Though scholarly skepticism has been expressed during the past two decades, lawyers and others have often supposed that people have a moral obligation or duty to obey the law. This article is about one possible basis for that moral constraint, a natural duty. The article has a number of interrelated objectives. In it, I try to show briefly why theories of natural duty are so important in this context, how these theories differ from other moral bases for obedience, what the strengths and weaknesses are of particular arguments about a natural duty, what features unify apparently disparate approaches, what assumptions …

The Moral Value Of Law, Philip Soper

Michigan Law Review

Suppose you have correctly concluded that it is your legal obligation to act or refrain from acting in a certain way. Can you, from that conclusion alone, say anything at all about what you ought to do morally?

An affirmative answer to this question implies that law has moral value regardless of content or circumstance: without knowing what the act is that the law commands or even what legal system has enacted the law, one would, on this view, be able to link the conclusion about legal obligation with some conclusion about moral responsibility. Such a view seems quite far-reaching …