Tutorial Questions

1.What is moral realism?

Moral realism is the view that there are facts of the matter about which actions are right and
which wrong, and about which things are good and which bad. But behind this bald statement
lies a wealth of complexity. If one is a full-blown moral realist, one probably accepts the
following three claims.

First, moral facts are somehow special and different from other sorts of fact. Realists differ,
however, about whether the sort of specialness required is compatible with taking some
natural facts to be moral facts. Take, for instance, the natural fact that if we do this action, we
will have given someone the help they need. Could this be a moral fact – the same fact as the
fact that we ought to do the action? Or must we think of such a natural fact as the natural
‘ground’ for the (quite different) moral fact that we should do it, that is, as the fact in the
world that makes it true that we should act this way?

Second, realists hold that moral facts are independent of any beliefs or thoughts we might
have about them. What is right is not determined by what I or anybody else thinks is right. It
is not even determined by what we all think is right, even if we could be got to agree. We
cannot make actions right by agreeing that they are, any more than we can make bombs safe
by agreeing that they are.

Third, it is possible for us to make mistakes about what is right and what is wrong. No matter
how carefully and honestly we think about what to do, there is still no guarantee that we will
come up with the right answer. So what people conscientiously decide they should do may
not be the same as what they should do

2. Define Lon Fuller’s concept of law

Lon Fuller, The Morality of Law (1964)

LON FULLER is regarded as a leading natural law lawyer or natural law thinker. He believes
that law is necessarily subject to a procedural morality. Human activity is necessarily goal-
oriented or purposive, people engage in a particular activity because it helps them to achieve
some end. Law is the enterprise of subjecting human conduct to the
governance of rules. Its essential function is to achieve social order through subjecting
people’s conduct to the guidance of general rules by which they may themselves orient their
behaviour.

https://www.studocu.com/my/document/universiti-teknologi-mara/jurisprudence-i/full-essay-
lon-l-fuller/3928313

3. Critically discuss King Rex and eight ways to fail to make law

American Jurist famously developed a secular natural law approach that regards law as
having an ‘inner morality’. By this he meant a legal system has the specific purpose of
‘subjecting human conduct to the governance of rules. It follows that in this purposive
enterprise there is a necessary connection between law and morality. In advancing his theory
of law, Fuller recounts the ‘moral’ tale of a fictional King Rex and the 8 ways in which he
fails to make valid law.

King Rex goes wrong in the example by:

1. Rex fails to achieve rules at all, so that every issue must be decided on an ad hoc basis.

2. Rex does not publicise the rules that his subjects are expected to observe.

3. Rex abuses his legislative powers by enacting retroactive legislation (If parking on a
yellow line was created as a criminal offence today you can’t prosecute people for doing it 6
months ago. You cannot pass a law which criminalises behaviour in the past – that’s
retroactive legislation);

4. Rex’s rules are incomprehensible.

5. Rex enacts contradictory rules.

6. Rex’s rules require conduct beyond the powers of the affected party.

7. Rex introduces such frequent changes in the rules that his subjects cannot adjust their
action.

8. Rex fails to achieve congruence between the rules as announced and their actual
administration. All of these procedural errors according to Fuller mean that King Rex’s laws
are not valid
4. What is internal morality of law according to Lon Fuller

Lon Fuller mentioned that all systems of law contain “internal morality” that imposes on
individuals a presumptive obligation of obedience. Thus, law are based on the moral
principles of the society and the legislature would not be allowed to enact law that is in
contradiction with moral of the society.

5. Discuss Hart’s attack on Fuller’s internal morality and Fuller’s rebuttal

6. Define John Finnis’s concept of law

Finnis spells out his definition of law in two places. In one place he says: “The central case of
law is the law and the legal system of a complete community purporting to have authority to
provide comprehensive and supreme direction for human behaviour in that community and to
grant legal validity to all other normative arrangements affecting the members of that
community.” In another place, Finnis says with more specificity: “throughout the book Law
has been used with a focal meaning so as to refer primarily to rules made, in accordance with
regulative legal rules by a determinate and effective authority (itself identified and,
standardly, constituted as an institution by legal rules) for a complete community and
buttressed by sanctions in accordance with the rule guided stipulations of adjudicative
institutions, this ensemble of rules and institutions being directed to reasonably resolving any
of the communities co-ordination problems (and to ratifying, tolerating, regulating or
overriding coordination solutions from any other institutions or sources of norms) for the
common good of that community, according to a manner and form itself adapted to that
common good by features of specificity, minimization of arbitrariness, and maintenance of a
quality of reciprocity between the subjects of the law both amongst themselves and in their
relations with the lawful authorities.”

7. Explain “self-evident values” as described by John Finnis

The basic goods are described by Finnis as activities and states that are worthwhile for their
own sake. As activities and states that are worthwhile in themselves, they are ends of human
activity. As ends of human activity there is no recourse to a further reason to explain their
value. Having claimed that the basic goods are self-evident Finnis sets out to clarify what he
means by the term self-evident. He does this in two ways. Firstly, he eliminates from
discussion meanings of the term self-evident that are not included or implied in his statement
that the basic goods are self-evident. Secondly, he elaborates on what he does mean by self-
evidence in the statement that the basic goods are self-evident. The seven basic values, which
Finnis claims are self-evident:

(i) Life

(ii) Knowledge

(iii) Play

(iv) Aesthetic (as thetic) experience

(v) Sociability (friendship)

(vi) Practical reasonableness

(vii) Religion (spirituality)

8. Explain John Locke’s labour theory of property and conservation of nature in light of
Locke’s Proviso

‘The labour theory of property’, postulates that the human beings can use labour to establish
their rights over the natural resources which creates a moral obligation upon others to respect
these rights. John Locke observed: “The labour of his body and the work of his hands, we
may say, are strictly his. So when he takes something from the state that nature has provided
and left it in, he mixes his labour with it, thus joining to it something that is his own; and in
that way he makes it his property.”Lockean theory of appropriation was found to be
influential than the social agreement, as propounded by Hugo Grotius, since the former
argued that the labour that is exerted upon the resources creates greater morally binding
restrictions than any social contractual obligations. Furthermore, this version of the labour
theory renders a great backing to the intellectual property rights of the creators.

9. What is John Rawl’s “Just saving principle” and role of previous generation?

The ‘just savings principle’ refers to the need for the people in the original position/previous
generation to ask themselves how much they would be willing to save at each stage of
advance, on the assumption that all other generations will save at the same rates. The
principle therefore: assigns an appropriate rate of accumulation to each level of advance.
Presumably this rate changes depending upon the state of society. When people are poor and
saving is difficult, a lower rate of saving should be required; whereas in a wealthier society
greater savings may reasonably be expected since the real burden is less. Eventually once just
institutions are firmly established, the net accumulation required falls to zero.The people in
the original position/previous generation will therefore save some of their resources for future
generations.