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    Sound adjudication therefore requires first determining w... — Carmelics
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    Challenges→Sound and legitimate adjudication under natural law theory requires prioritizing social-fact sourced law and setting it aside only when it is too iniquitous to apply.

    Sound adjudication therefore requires first determining what counts as law via moral criteria, not prioritizing social-fact sources and carving out narrow exceptions for extreme iniquity.

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    Reasons For

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    Reason for
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    • 1.Laws enabling genocide or slavery lack moral legitimacy regardless of their procedural enactment, so moral criteria must filter what counts as law.
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    • 2.Judges who enforce unjust laws become complicit in grave harms, making moral evaluation a duty, not an optional add-on to legal reasoning.
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    • 3.Social-fact sources (legislation, precedent) can systematically embed injustice; only moral criteria provide independent grounds to resist corrupt systems.
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    Reasons Against

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    • 1.Judges lack consensus on moral criteria and institutional expertise in ethics; prioritizing them invites arbitrary, unaccountable personal judgment over rule of law.
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    • 2.Democratic legitimacy requires respecting duly-enacted laws even when unjust; moral override transfers power from legislatures to judiciaries undemocratically.
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    • 3.Social-fact sources provide predictable, knowable standards; moral criteria are contested and shifting, undermining the law's essential function of clear guidance.
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    Key Terms

    Adjudication(as the process where Finnis believes moral reasoning matters)
    The process of a judge or court hearing a case and making a legal decision about it.
    Iniquity(as used in legal philosophy)
    Serious wrongdoing, injustice, or wickedness; behavior that is deeply immoral or unfair.
    Moral criteria(as used in ethics)
    Standards or principles based on what is right and wrong that are used to judge or evaluate something.
    positivism (legal)(Positivist self-characterization in reply to Dworkin's criticisms)
    The view that identifies law not with all valid reasons for decision but only with the source-based subset of them
    social-fact sources(as used in legal philosophy)
    Evidence about actual real-world facts and practices in society that help explain what a law actually means or how it's understood by people.

    Connections

    2 topics

    Social Contract1 linkedJustice & Punishment1 linked

    Related

    Democratic legitimacy requires respecting duly-enacted laws even when unjust; mo...Judges lack consensus on moral criteria and institutional expertise in ethics; p...Judges who enforce unjust laws become complicit in grave harms, making moral eva...Laws enabling genocide or slavery lack moral legitimacy regardless of their proc...
    +3 moreShow less
    Social-fact sources (legislation, precedent) can systematically embed injustice;...Social-fact sources provide predictable, knowable standards; moral criteria are ...

    Details

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    claim
    Perspectives
    2 (1 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit
    Sound and legitimate adjudication under natural law theory requires prioritizing...