Fuller and Natural Law

Fuller says that law is about guiding human behavior and you do this by appealing to their conscience. This makes sense in theory and may work in individual societies where everyone has the some type of thinking. In a diverse culture, such as ours, it is hard to appeal to everyone’s conscience. With so many different ways of thinking I think guiding human behavior would by extremely hard to do let alone work all of the time. Fuller also said that if the laws do not appeal to someone conscience they cannot effectively guide human behavior, which according to Fuller is their sole purpose. This is why I believe that positive law is the only type of law that can work in a society like ours. With lawsuits and disagreements everyday about religion and the state it is extremely hard to make law on a moral ground only. Positive law throws all of that out the window. People follow the law because that is what they are told to do by a leader, or elected leader in our case. In our society we can also effect positive law with elections and pressure on our government officials. I believe that this simplified version of legal theory is what works in the diverse culture that we have today.

Fuller also says that “bad” laws show that morals should be part of law. I believe that “bad” laws can be taken care of in our society by positive legal thinking because our legal officials can change the law. Where as if the law was a matter of morals and there was something you did not agree with there would be no chance of changing it.