Weekly Topic 10/13/09

I feel that positivism views law and morality as two separate entities. There is no inherent or necessary connections between law and morality. Law is seen as conceptually separate from moral and ethical values. The positivist argument is solely about the nature of law as a human institution. Hart's formulation of the positivist distinction does reiterate Aquinas's distinction between natural and human law. By distinguishing legal norms from moral norms, Hart is unintentionally reinforcing Aquinas's point. However, positivism and natural law are not similar in their approach to law. Each school of thought has a different end result in mind with regards to the law. Because of natural law's conflation of law and morality into one indistinguishable set of norms, positivism and natural law are fundamentally different. Positivism alters the natural law approach by acknowledging that law and morality are not indistinguishable. This distinction between law and morality seems to be more valid regarding our legal system. While natural law would say that morality is inherent in the law, positivism would say that they are two separate things that happen to randomly coincide. Natural law would assert that morality plays a part in every law, whereas positivism acknowledges that all laws are not morally infused. I would say that positivism does improve the methods of natural law by distinguishing between law and morality. It provides a more modern and accurate approach to law than natural law.