Law of Nature

Now the Law of Nature is so unalterable, that it cannot be changed even by God himself.

The existence of the Law of Nature is proved by two kinds of argument, a priori, and a posteriori, the former a more abstruse, and the latter a more popular method of proof.

We must farther remark, that natural right relates not only to those things that exist independent of the human will, but to many things, which necessarily follow the exercise of that will.

It is certainly doubtful whether the Romans were ever seriously threatened by it, but at any rate they had adequate protection in their theory of Natural Law.

I know no reason why the law of the Romans should be superior to the laws of the Hindoos, unless the theory of Natural Law had given it a type of excellence different from the usual one.

Indeed, it is not easy to say what turn the history of thought, and therefore, of the human race, would have taken, if the belief in a law natural had not become universal in the ancient world.

If, then, the principle of inheritance be a principle of natural law, it is as applicable to intellectual, as to material, property.

But the principle of inheritance is a principle of natural law, founded on the presumption that, where a deceased person has left no evidence to the contrary, it was his will, (so long as he had his reason, and therefore so long as his will was of any legal importance,) that in that moment, (whenever it might arrive,) in which his property could no longer be useful to, nor be controlled by, himsel …

But I mean that there has existed in England a self-constituted, and unconstitutional legislative power, which has arbitrarily assumed the prerogative of setting aside the Common Law, or law of nature, and setting up its own will in its stead.

Natural law, then, is the paramount law.

There is no other standard, than natural rights, by which civil law can be measured.

Natural law recognizes the validity of all contracts which men have a natural right to make, and which justice requires to be fulfilled:

These principles were finally considered by the Roman lawyers to fit in with a Greek philosophical conception, the Law of Nature, which was destined to have a serious influence on human thought down to our own days.

but another and more striking piece of evidence is the rise of the conception of the Law of Nature, which is in truth law divorced from its penal sanctions.

Huius autem iuris naturalis partem esse ius gentium, primaevum quod dicitur, diversum a iure gentium secundario sive positivo, quorum posterius mutari potest.

Sicut et illud confitendum est, contra ius perpetuum naturae gentiumque, unde ista libertas originem sumpsit in omne tempus duratura, nullam valere Pontificis auctoritatem.

Quinimo non solum contra ius naturale esset, velle impedire talem navigationem, sed etiam tenemur contrarium facere, hoc est, prodesse iis quibus possumus, cum id sine damno nostro fieri potest’.

It was a principle of the Common Law, as it is of the law of nature, and of common sense, that no man can be taxed without his personal consent.

Children learn many principles of natural law at a very early age.

The rule assumes, what is true, that natural law is a thing certain in itself;

Much more important were the relations of the Common Law with the cosmopolitan doctrine of the Law of Nature, certainly not the least notable product of medieval intellect.

All the Germanic virtues, in so far as they agree with the precepts and commendations of the Church, belong to the law of nature in the regular scholastic usage of the term:

and if it be objected that zealots for the law of nature have often advocated or carried out beneficial changes, the best reply is, that the law of nature has often been a name for the dictates of obvious expediency.

I call natural laws, those which nature dictates in all ages to all men, for the maintenance of that justice which she (say what they will of her) hath implanted in our hearts.

But the true and sovereign and manifest law they neither see nor make the guide of their life.

quia quod ad jus naturale attinet, omnes homines aequales sunt, Dig.

) The ‘law of nature’ is, therefore, the ancient pre-Christian ingredient in the system, and the ‘Senchus Mor’ says of it:

It is the science of peace;

It is the science which alone can tell any man what he can, and cannot, do;

But if justice be a natural principle, then it is necessarily an immutable one;

the Law of nature, and the King’s royal favour, he hopeth, will plead for his excuse;