First MJ... Now Cronkite....Law outside of the law

As many of you probably know, Walter Cronkite died today. If you don't know him, he was the rock star of TV anchors. You may also be asking yourself what this has to do with law in any way. Well with all the celebrity deaths recently I have been thinking about unalterable laws that aren't codified in conventional ways.
When we talk about law in class, we almost explicitly refer to some body of laws that are written down. Quite often we talk within the context of the American legal system. However, lets take a step back and two steps forward. In the Orestaia we spoke of early legal systems that focused on unwritten laws, laws of nature so to speak. Then look forward to Legal Positivism. Some Positivists believe in the rule of recognition. Now take it just one more step forward and look at the normative theory, that law can gain validity through roots in social norms.

So what do these two things have in common? Well natural law and social norms are not easily defined. It seems at the basis of both the Positivist system and the Natural Law systems, there is always some fundamental belief in these unwritten laws that influence written law. Sure, morality could be considered far different from social norms (think back to Nazi Germany), but neither of these things are written down anywhere. Yet at the root of all our beliefs in law is this idea that there are underlying ideas throughout human beings that are the root cause of law.

Now think about Positivism and Natural law like this. Mainly, they are arguing over morality in law. Morality, for the sake of this discussion, is either a socially developed NORM or a divinely given rule set. Now take it even further and see that Positivists believe that law comes from somewhere, whether its social norms or something else.

What im really saying is this. Even though these two schools bicker constantly about the inclusion and necessity of morality, they do not seem to fight quite as much over the origin of law. More simply, if law is a medicine, these two schools disagree how much of each chemical should be added. However, neither really argue that at the root of those chemicals are merely protons, neutrons, and electrons.

So the next time you read about these two theories, think of it in the grand scheme. They are in a sense arguing about the depth of two very similar things in the law. And if you really are in the clouds that day, think of the unwritten laws. Bonds of friendship, death, love, blood relations, whatever comes to mind really. Each of these unwritten natural laws plays a role somewhere in our legal system. Whether those things influence morality, social norms, or something altogether different is an opinion we have to form by ourselves.

P.S: why wont this thing let me indent?