CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
This study was ignited as a result of a couple of experiences and observations. The researcher observes that law and morality have a distinctive quality of binding the people based on its operative measures; and thus wonder why people should make laws that disregard morality. At Ojoto in Anambra State of Nigeria, there was a man who was extremely poor that he could not afford a day’s meal for his family; he could not pay for his children’s school and hospital bills. In the midst of all these, he impregnated his wife again. Out of fear that the child to be born would suffer like others, the wife decided to carry out an abortion. It came to the notice of the man and he sued the wife to court. After several debates, the judgment was in favor of the woman on the basis that the man was incapable of taking care of the children. Even though the court judgment was in favor of the woman just because the husband was not able to take care of the family, it was quite obvious that, morally, abortion is not acceptable. That the man cannot take care of his family does not make abortion right. Law and morality are actually separated in this case. Law and morality are meant to guide human actions through its binding principles and should not in any way be discussed independent of the other. Positive laws on the other hand should follow and adhere to the dictates of natural law. It is against this background that St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica asserts that human law should not go against the dictates of natural law because natural law is seen as the ultimate law and that any law which goes against the dictates of natural law should not be obeyed and should be declared null and void.
Sometimes, people do not understand what should be morally and legally binding respectively. They value the rightness or wrongness of an action on the basis of the fact that their friend does it or does not do it. To succeed in making laws that should guide actions, it should be geared towards the wellbeing of the individual the law is meant for. The moral wellbeing of the individual should be the priority of any law maker or legislation and that is the point of departure of the American legal philosopher Lon L. Fuller on his idea of the necessary connection between law and morality.
Fuller, in his major book The Morality of Law set out what he calls the eight “desiderata” which every legal system should possess. The word “desiderata” is an Italian word to mean the “desired”, that is to say, Fuller used the eight “desiderata” to express the principles which a legal system should apply to make a sustainable society. These principles (Desiderata) include:
Laws must be general
They must be promulgated, i.e., published
It must not be retroactive
To achieve their objectives, laws must be clear, obscure and incoherent legislation can make legality unattainable
Laws must be non contradictory
laws requiring the impossible should not be enacted, the laws or legislation should not impose requirements, which its subjects are incapable of.
To command the impossible is inconsistent with the enterprise of law; consistencies of law are commendable because too frequent change in law diminishes its effectiveness.
There should be congruence between official action and declared rule. Officials must themselves comply with rules they announce and administer.1
Fuller also distinguished between the two moralities (morality of aspiration and morality of duty). The two moralities are incorporated with the eight principles to make up what he called “the inner morality of law” which he saw as part of natural law. For him, law necessarily fulfills certain moral requirements and these moral requirements are the inner morality as articulated in the eight “Desiderata”. There should be an attitude of moral commitment on the part of the people that apply it in their everyday life. Misapplication of the above theory of Fuller in the making of the laws of the society manifests itself in poor education, disregards for legal, religious, and moral obligations. These principles are seen as goods which will help if applied appropriately in making of laws of any society. That is to say, for a law to be morally and legally binding, it must be to the standard enumerated in the eight principles which is contained in the inner morality of law.
| Project details | Contents |
|---|---|
| Number of Pages | 100 pages |
| Chapter one | Introduction |
| Chapter two | Literature review |
| Chapter three | methodology |
| Chapter four | Data analysis |
| Chapter five | Summary,discussion & recommendations |
| Reference | Reference |
| Questionnaire | Questionnaire |
| Appendix | Appendix |
| Chapter summary | 1 to 5 chapters |
| Available document | PDF and MS-word format |
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