Jurisprudence

The realist-formalist dichotomy represents only half of the jurisprudential picture in the United States. The other half comprises a dialogue between the positivist and natural-law schools of thought. This dialogue revolves around the classic debate over the appropriate sources of law.

Positivists maintain that the only appropriate sources of law are rules and principles that have been expressly enacted or recognized by a governmental entity, like a state or federal legislature, administrative body, or court of law. These rules and principles may be properly considered law, positivists contend, because individuals may be held liable for disobeying them. Positivists believe that other sources for determining right and wrong, such as religion and contemporary morality, are only aspirational, and may not be legitimately consulted by judges when rendering a decision.

Natural-law proponents, or naturalists, agree that governmental rules and regulations are a legitimate source of law, but assert that they are not the only source. Naturalists believe that the law must be informed by eternal principles that existed before the formation of government and are independent of governmental recognition. Depending on the particular strain of NATURAL LAW, these principles may be derived from theology, moral philosophy, human reason, historical practice, and individual conscience.

The dialogue between positivists and naturalists has a long history. For many centuries, historians, theologians, and philosophers distinguished positivism from naturalism by separating written law from unwritten law. For example, the Ten Commandments were inscribed on stone tablets, as were many of the laws of the ancient Greeks. Roman Emperor JUSTINIAN I (A.D. 482–565) reduced most of his country's laws to a voluminous written code. At the same time, Christian, Greek, and Roman thinkers all appealed to a higher law that transcended the written law promulgated by human beings.

Prior to the American Revolution, English philosophers continued this debate along the same lines. English political thinkers JOHN AUSTIN and THOMAS HOBBES were strict positivists who believed that the only authority courts should recognize are the commands of the sovereign because only the sovereign is entrusted with the power to back up a command with military and police force. First intimated by Italian philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli, the "sovereign command" theory of law has been equated in the United States with the idea that might makes right.

Contrasted with the writings of Hobbes and Austin were the writings of JOHN LOCKE in England and THOMAS JEFFERSON in America. In his Second Treatise on Government (1690), Locke established the idea that all people are born with the inalienable right to life, liberty, and property. Locke's ruminations about individual rights that humans possess in the state of nature prior to the creation of government foreshadowed Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. In 1776, the Declaration of Independence announced the self-evident truth that "all men are created equal" and are "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights," including the right to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Both positivism and naturalism have had an enormous influence on how U.S. citizens think about law. The institution of African–American SLAVERY, which was recognized by the U.S. Constitution and legalized by legislation passed in the South prior to the Civil War (1861–65), was attacked by abolitionists who relied on higherlaw principles of religion and conscience to challenge the moral foundations of human bondage. Following WORLD WAR II, the Allied powers successfully prosecuted German government officials, industrialists, and military leaders in Nuremberg for committing GENOCIDE against European Jewry, even though the Nazi regime had passed laws authorizing such extermination. The Allies relied in part on the natural-law principle that human dignity is an inviolable right that no government may vitiate by written law.