Natural Law Is the Law

Natural Law is the law that exists outside of a politically ordered society. As a legal genre, it is fundamentally the law of nature, holding essentially that things are the way they are simply because, by nature, it is how they are. Philosophically, natural law expresses the basic, natural rights of all human beings. These rights are outlined and declared in such documents as the Declaration of Independence.

Natural rights fundamental to natural law include the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of property; along with the belief that all men are created equally. Historically, natural law has been more closely related to the common law than civil law. At its core is a fundamental belief that all laws derive from the natural world (or from a supreme being). The common law of a society is typically based on traditions, which derive from natural-world or spiritual beliefs.

These natural beliefs are eventually transferred from the individuals and families to the sovereign state as groups of people organized into political systems governed by the rule of law. As applied to American law, it is quite clear the nation was founded on a theory of natural law. As previously stated, the Declaration of Independence cites four main principals of natural law: equality, life, liberty and property. These principles have subsequently greatly influenced the development of American-style democracy.

For example, a fundamental component of American democracy is free-market capitalism, which is based on a belief of individual ownership of property. However, if the American legal system still operates under a pure natural law mentality, it could be argued that the death penalty is not be an option. Clearly the death penalty violates the fundamental natural law principal of life.

Under a natural law philosophy, criminals would more likely be punished through a system of life sentences or a focus on rehabilitation so that, once rehabilitated, they are able to return to societal life. On the other hand, an argument may be made that the death penalty is actually in accordance with natural law theory. The basis of natural law theory traces its roots to what humans feel is fundamentally right and wrong (Robinson and Groves 105).

Since almost all societies, especially American society, believe killing another human being is wrong, this type of behavior must be stopped. Another fundamental tradition in human history is a punishment system based on the "eye for an eye" principal. If a society's natural law is rooted in this system of equal justice, then employing the death penalty as punishment for murder seems natural. However, there is still the contradiction of killing a human being because society feels that killing another is wrong.

As can be seen, how natural law theory applies to the death penalty varies greatly depending on what one views.