Higher Law: A Necessity for the Individual and Society

Charles E. Rice published Fifty Questions on the Natural Law in 1993. In it, he gathered a number of sources regarding natural law ans its relevance to society. He first starts off my stating that natural law "provides a guide through which we can safely and rightly choose to love God by acting in accord with our nature and by helping others to do the same." He then brings up Aristotle, who said that "there is a common principle of the just and unjust that all people in some way divine [discern] even if they have no association or commerce with each other." This is similar to what Martin Luther King said, that people have an obligation to enforce just laws and disregard unjust laws set before them. No one would want to live in an area where the law and the people themselves are unjust. The only reason that dictatorships lasted in the past (ie. Hitler, Saddam Hussein) is because of the peoples' fear of the dictator's power to simply eradicate them. Rice also cites Cicero, who considers law as "the highest reason, implanted by Nature, which commands what ought to be done and forbids the opposite." …