NATURAL CRIME AND LEGAL CRIME

Natural Crime and Legal Crime

Natural Crime And Legal Crime

Introduction

Natural Crime versus Legal Crime Law, what is it and where does it comes from? There are many kinds of law ranging from natural law, constitutional law, criminal law, civil law, usual law and positive law. Usual law was and is part of the English legal system. Although most of our laws originated from usual law, the supreme law of the land is the United States Constitution. These four sources are administrative law, usual law (which includes case law) statutes and constitutional law. Every law is subordinate to constitutional law because the main source of law in the United States is the United States Constitution.

Discussion

In this paper it will go into depth about natural law versus positive law, explaining each in its usual understanding and then how interpret them. It will also cover a few laws that are subcategorized under each and finally a few main crimes from the FBI's crime index and how it believe they would be catogorized, (natural crime or legal crime) using my interpretation and understanding of the law.

Definitions of laws

Natural law or the law of nature as it is also known is an ethical idea or theory. It is a type of law that is derived by nature and many would claim that, hence, has validity everywhere. In jurisprudence (The philosophy or science of law) “a system of right or justice usual to all humankind and derived from nature rather than from the rules of community, or positive law” (Britannica Concise Encyclopedia). The concept of natural law is traced back to Aristotle, who believed that what was "just by nature" was not always the same as what was "just by law." The existence of natural law was supported in the modern era by Hugo Grotius, who insisted that natural law is valid, even on the assumption that God does not exist. Thomas Hobbes an English philosopher defined a natural law as "a precept of general rule found out by cause, by which a man is forbidden to do that which is destructive of his life" (Moskalewicz 2002 385).

Positive law is concerned to be man-made law, meaning, law established or duly enacted by a popularly elected government. Positive law is declared official, adopted or passed by an official or person vested with the authority by a government to stipulate the regulations of a given community. In America positive laws come in a wide range for both state and federal governments. These include judicial orders, legislative enactments, administrative regulations and executive decrees. In short, a positive law is any law that came to be via a written bill of the government.

Interpretation of the law

The previously mentioned kinds of law i.e. natural law and positive law give us natural crimes and legal crimes. Where an act is catogorized a crime could originate from one of the two mentioned kinds of law, a natural crime (obviously stemming from natural law) and a legal crime (being catogorized as such) ...