CHAPTER 1

Chapter 1 taks about the law’s roots. Law is everywhere and to many perspectives have
contributed to the definition of law that law is essential in society. It is a safeguard to our
everyday life. The law is like an all-knowing piece of document that knows what,when and
which of our rights. Without the legal system, from which the law formed part of, our affairs
with our fellow man will not have a parameter or a check to determine the bad and the good of it.

The first few paragraphs of chapter 1 sums up what exactly is the law. I will define what the law
is according from the definitions given from the book. First, for the natural law believers, the law
is consonance with the morality and nature while for the legal-positivists, the law may neither
incorporate morality as they are claim to emanate solely from the sovereign without accordonace
to moral principles.

The law originated long before christ have born and have continously adapt from the medieval
form of rules to now a sophisticated legal system. Speaking of medieval times, the law was so
different from the present-day legislation that in those times laws were mere but barbaric rules
imposed by rules of that time, such as the ‘Hammurabi code’ created by the king of babylon in
1760 B.C. The authority to enact laws rested exclusively with the king that it failed to provide
the most important concept of due process. A more sophisticated ‘legal system’ in the medieval
times was of the greeks, the athenian statesman solon was given the authority to legislate athens.
Solon legislate laws on the economy,politics,marriage and crime. Further in time, it was emperor
justinian that ordered the systematic and comprehensive codification of laws enacted before him.
This sophisticated consolidation of rules and laws influenced greatly the world,most especially
europe in generations to come.

The western legal tradition were discussed in this chapter, the distinctions were made on the
western legal tradition. Distinctions such as the demarcation between legal institutions, nature of
legal doctrine, law has it’s own internal logic, and the training of lawyers were highlighted by the
author.

The rule of law were also ellucidated, it was the English Constitutional scholar Albert Venn
Dicey that expounded the concept of rule of law. According to him, there exist a three principles
of rule of law, one, it is have absolute supremacy over arbitrary power, this means that a law will
always be on top and any rules that emanates from it will be subordinate to that law, two, An
equal availment of law by all classes, this principle meant that everybody no matter where in the
social class you belong, the law will always be the same to you and lastly, the third principle is
the law as consequence of the rights of the individuals.

The distinctions of civil and common law, as discussed in the book, is that first, common law are
unwritten and civil law are codified and written, second, common law are casuistic and in that
the building of blocks of the common law are cases while the civil law is texts. Third is the
centrality of court decisions, the decisions in the common law are binding to the to the lower
courts in the judicial heirarchy, while the civil law such as in the US, it’s decision are elevated to
the supreme court and lastly, the common law lies in this premiese ‘where there is a remedy,
there is a right’ while in the civil law, the premise is that ‘where there is a right, there is a
remedy’.

The concluding part of the chapter highlights the functions of the law. The law functioned as
mechanism on order, it puts restraints and safeguards of our rights and provide limitations on it.
Another function of law is justice, the law seeks to give justice to everybody and to give each
man what is due to him.

The source of law emanates from different sources such as the legislation and common law.
Legislations were vested with the authority to enact laws, thus they became the source of the law.
Court decisions in common law became a source of the laws in common law countries such as
england, this was influenced by the principle of stare decisis.

Chapter 2

Because us humans have evolving minds and norms, the law also expand it’s branches to
accommodate the most specific affairs of our everyday life such as family law, labour law,
martime law and many other laws. The law can’t just be a single collection of texts and
decisions, it has to regroup the collection and consolidate the texts according to what aspect of
everyday life it focused. This chapter discussed the hypothetical branches of law.

We start with public and private law. These laws governed the relationship of citizen and the
state and the relationship and affiars between citizens. The existence of public law provides the
guidelines and limitations as to the relationship of citizens to it’s state, the state could enact laws
for the welfare of it’s citizens and the citizen’s are mandated to contribute to the general welfare,
this fits the description of a constitutional law, where the it prescribes a general rules and
regulation to the public. Other laws that concerned the public such as criminal laws falls under
the public law also. However their boundary to each other often difficult to perceive.

Contract as one of the sub branches of private law. When two person agreed on a certain agenda
whether for their own benefit or for others, they constitute a contract in which they are bind to
follow, failure to follow will have legal consequences as accorded by the law on contracts. A
private law in nature as it involved two citizens for which they are in agreement of something
that involve only of their own. In regards to Civil and common law systems, the law on
contracts differ in that the civil law are more moralistic while the common law leans toward
pragmatism and tends to be bussiness oriented. Contracts have to be alligned with the public
policies for it would be considered void if it seek to use the law to achieve immoral objectives.
When a breach of contract existed between two parties, the court may award damages to the
injured party, the court would weigh and balance on how much is proper to compensate the
injured party from the actions of the offending party. In terms of binding contracts, the written
and oral agreements are no less binding than each other.

Another branch of law is the torts or delicts. Imagine riding in a riding jeepney that is faster than
the speed limit then it suddenly braked causing you to bump your head to the metal railings
which ultimately led to your severe concussion. The accident left you scarred and financially
broken. The proper remedy for the accident would be seeking compensation under the law on
torts. The accident was a result of the negligence of the driver for driving beyond the speed limit.

Torts are civil wrongs in which the victims are allowed to seek compensation for their injuries ,
such injuries will be compensated by the erring party. the law provides remedies for conduct that
have negligently cause harm to another party. In a Torts case, the injured party have the burden
of proof to prove that the wrong was done negligently, so the passenger on the jeepney will have
to provide the court with his medical analysis and doctor’s testimonies to show that his severe
concussion was a result of sudden brake from a faster acceleration. The law on contract is also
involve in this case as the jeepney driver breached his contract with his passenger, as the driver
have the obligation to carry his passenger safely to his destination. In regards to the actual
compensation, the trauma of the passenger would most likely not be compensated as what the
law leans in to is the compensation of financial loss as a result of the hospitalization.

A common law scenario of torts is this, considering that the owner of a beach resort owned a
floating restaurant that was situated 4 miles from the beach front and in the middle of their
operation during the day, a leak was discovered below the floor and it cracked wide open
allowing sea water to rush inside the bamboo floor and break it in to half, all the guests panicked
and was ultimately submerged in the water, fortunately, a rescue team was immediately sent by
the owner resulting to mild casualty. It was later found out that the flooring of the customized
boat was made of light and cheap materials. Under the common law, the beach owner have the
‘duty of care’ to his guests, by allowing a ligh materials that are not strong enough for the boat
constitute a violation of his ‘duty of care’ to his guests. The owner owe a duty to the guests
whom it is foreseeable are likely to be harmed by his conduct.

Under special circumstances, there are defendants in torts care that are considered to be liable to
an injury regardless whether he is at fault, this is called the ‘strict liability’.

This branch of law is mostly common depicted in hollywood movies and television, the criminal
law. Fault is a necessary requisite in a criminal law. When you kill someone with a gun, fault
exist when you trigger the gun which led to his death without any justification for such act. An
evidence of fault must be establish to convict a person of a crime.

A criminal liability exists when a person engage in an activity or conduct that cause substantial
harm to an individual or the public without justification. So when you killed that person with a
gun just for the fun of it, you possessed a criminal liability. Another requisite to convict a person
for crime is the presence of a guilty act as well as the guilty mind. However not all accussed of a
crime have the guilty act and mind, take the scenario of being robbed and at same time being
threatened with a gun inside your car and you found a screw driver beside you and used it to
stabbed him and run away. The victim possessed the reasonable force to commit such act or the
stabbing of his robber.

Criminal law functions primarily as one to punish convicted offenders. The concept of deterrence
and restorative justice is what jusitified the punishment of these convicted offenders. A few
criminals ever dream of being caught, so to prevent them from committing the same criminal act
they must be jailed and at the same time, their time in jail would rehabilitate them and would
encourage them to change. However, the concept of retribution,for the third ground for the
punishment of convicted offenders, remains to be argue. Lastly, by isolating the convicted
offenders from society, it reduces crime, as the same convicted offenders would repeat the same
over and over again.

Property, another branch of law that is important to our everyday life. The law of property
specifies the safeguards to our properties, whether real property or personal property or movable
or immovable property. The property law determines who is the owner of property contested by
more than one parties and the determination on what certain limit can they possess such property.

Constitutional and aministrative law as the branches of law that governed the extent power is
shared in the government. One of the purposes of Constitutional law determines the functions of
each branch of the government while the administrative law determines the power and duties of
the public officials in those branches. Other branches of th law that benefit the state is th
environmental law, family law, company law and public international law.

Chapter 3

Law and Morality

Our world and our mind our always evolving, we may repeal certain acts as immoral in the past
and have become a norm in our society. The liberal expressions our thoughts makes us question
if this is something that is in accordance with reason and morality. Many phenomena in our
world that makes us doubt whether it is aligned with morality or it is simply resulted from an
irrational human being. The legislations that was enacted that is considered immoral to some but
a norm to others. This chapter highlighted the relationship of law and morality.

Professor H.L.A Hart’s argument was that an act that violated a ‘law’ considered as immoral in
other perspectives is considers the act as violation of that law since the law in question was valid
in that place and time. Professor Lon fuller leaned towards the argument that the immoral law
can’t qualify as a law because it deviated significantly from morality. Fuller presented a standard
to determine the validity of a law, this is the inner morality of law, which came with eight
essential principles in which those laws that does not conforme with the principles are not
qualified to be called as laws.

An argument between H.L.A Hart and lord devlin highlighted the ‘shared morality of the society.
For Devlin he argued that the state has every right to punished immoral act of homosexuality as
it teared the fabric of the society, the act is considered as an external force that break the
society’s morality. Hart, on the other hand, argued that the state does not require a shared
morality as it is only obvious from the fact of protecting the people from such immoral acts such
as homosexuality is only for the survival of the societ, and that for it to remain morally straight it
needs to fend off any immoral acts which threatened it’s moral existence.

Another moral/immorat act highlighted in the chapter is on the issue of abortion. The United
States supreme court ruled in the criminization of abortion as unconstitutional and held on the
matter of performing abortion that it is only valid until it is perform in the third trimester. The
morality of these decision and it’s subsequent laws were questioned whether it is moral or not.
The act of doing abortion morally weighed against the right of a woman over her body. Another
issue on the moral/immoral act is Euthanasia or the act of intentionally cutting off the life
support of an terminally ill individual.

The analysis of the issues presented in the chapter was congruedent with natural law theories.
The principle of ‘what naturally is, ought to be’ is grounded on the belief that whatever is
naturally fitting to the society, is what we should be pursuing.

Individual rights are essential to the analysis of law and moral that in the absence of such right
no serious analysis can be conducted. What ought to be should be followed, our right to life
should not be taken summarily by a law. An example would be the extermination of jews by nazi
germany, a decree that authorize the termination of jewish people is invalid on the grounds that it
infringed the individual right to life. The validity of that command in that time and place should
not be tolerated on the reaason that it was not morally right to kill life based on a command.

‘What naturally is, ought to be’ principle is present in the prosecution of dictators and presidents
in the past. They are charged with ‘crime against humanity’ despite no specific individuals were
recorded to be the plaintiff as ‘humanity’ refers to the general population of human being
occupying earth, these dictators committeed a series of crime that would generalized their acts as
‘crimes against humanity’. ‘What naturally is,ought to be’, in it’s literal interpretation, the peace
and sancity of a country should be pursued and maintained. In scenario given above,’crime
against humanity is when a single individual broke this peace and continously bereft the people
of that country of their rights.

Chapter 4

Law is an abstract object, it is powerful and strong but it is useless without a physical agency
applying it to the physical world. The law would be nothing without someone to enforce it. This
chapter highlighted the importance of the ‘courts’.

In a nutshell, the court interpret and apply the law. The court have a very important and
substantial role in a law, of all the institution that are mandated from the law, the court have the
utmost authority vested from the law. They personified the law, if the law is the beating heart,
the court is the body. It is an arena for settling legal controversies between two or more parties
and the gladiators would be the lawyers, the court hears the case presented before them and
determined the guilt and verdict if no jury exists such as in the Philippines, where the judge is the
only one who could choose the winner between two conflicting parties. The court is an
interesting topic for hollywood films as mentioned in the chapter, films that are set in a court
premise are interesting to watch, but these are are inspired by real life court proceedings.

In a criminal proceedings, Counsels from both parties clash with their statements and evidences
and etc, and just like in movies, the tension is high and the shouting echoes the court room. This
is what it takes for justice to be ascertained in court and in the end of the day, the court or the
jury have the power to determine the guilt and the verdict. In a Civil trials, legal reasoning is
mostly used by lawyers and they try to sway the court of the merits of their case, citing
jurisprudences, strongly emphasizing their arguments and reasons. In a common law setting,
lawyers in civil trial proceedings would present a similar decisions from a previous case to have
a substantial weight in their own cases while the other side would explore the differences in that
jurisprudence and use it to his own advantage.

Legal philosopher Ronal Dworkin remarked that the capital of the ‘empire of the law’ are the
courts while it’s princes are the judges. The court have an utmost role in a legal system, the
chapter pointed out the importance of the courts as having represented the very apotheosis of
justice. They have the power of the sword of justice, they can allot each man what is each due to
him. And ofcourse the court is neutral, for a free and fair society to prosper, it must strip it’s
outside allegiance and seek what is best for each case.

Judicial function of the court. The court is not only restricted to the ambit of the law, it also yeild
it’s own standards which are not necessarily a law but a principles. These principles are mostly
cited to ellucidate an act to give weight to it but this is a standard in which they have to be
observed. In a’Hard cases’, the judge is not expected to seek his own preferences but to seek
among the competing principles and laws and choose which one is more compelling. This is an
obvious appeal to the democratic theory where the judge does not legislate but merely enforce
the rights and the present laws.

The court have jurisdiction to settle criminal and civil controversies. Their jurisdiction is
exclusive in all legal systems. However, since judge are also prone to human mistakes, their
settlement of cases are not absolute except in the highest court in the legal system, but for lower
judges in the heirarchy of judges , their decision can be be revised by a higher authority than
them like the court of apeals. This is to ascertain that justice is best given. In a common law
system, appellate courts are restricted to only review the decision of the lower court and
determine whether they apply and interpret the law correctly. Procedures in a court are different
in a civil and common law system, In a common law, they adopt an adversarial system while an
inquisitorial system is adopted by the civil law. Judges in common and civil law are also
different, in that common law judges does not have an active role in the trial, he only facilitate
the case present before him while the civil law judges have a more active role in the trial.

Sentencing is an integral part of a court trial as this where it determine whether justice would
prevail or not. A sentencing includes imprisonment, community service or a suspended sentence
of imprisonment. However, sentencing in the lower court is always not absolute as the law
provided a remedy for the accused to seek an appeal to the higher court. The higher court does
not hear the case but review the court records of the trial to assess if there is anything that would
jusitfy another trial. In a civil trial, the decision of the court would also not be final and
executory unless they are appealed to a higher court.

The appointment of judges are the methods used by countries such as U.S and the philippines,
prospective nominees are vetted by department of justice, American Bar Association, executive
and legislative commitees before the president can sign and appoint him or her as the judge. In
the philippines, a separate committee is sought before the president can appoint judges.

Raymond wack’ Philosophy of Law

CHAPTER 1

In the chapter 1 of Raymond Wack’s Philosophy of law he composed the works of John finnis, Cicero,
St. Thomas Aquinas, Aristotle and many others on the subject of Natural law. For John Finnis, he assert
that when we attempt to explain what law is, we make assumptions. From this standpoint, natural law
make the minds behind those who tries to understand it produce many logic on the nature and impact of
the natural law. Cicero’s assertion on Natural law is that it true law is right reason in agreement with
nature. From this standpoint, cicero have asserted that natural law is the ‘higher’ law, that God is the
author,promulgator and the judge of this law and it is a sin to alter it. Classical greece also yielded notions
on natural law, such as the Greek Stoics wherein they have aligned ‘Law’ with ‘Reason’, and any ‘Law’
which does not conform to reason is ‘invalid’. St. Thomas Aquinas included Naturl Law as one of the
categories of Law. St. Aquinas asserted that laws must conform to the requirements of the natural law or
it will lose it’s power to bind morally. Natural rights was discussed in this chapter, notable assertions of
Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and jean jacque Rosseau was highlighted. For Hobbes, natural law teaches
us the necessity of self preservation. Hobbes stemmed from his ‘Leviathan’ and concluded that “all of us
are in a natural state of of perpetual war of all against all, where no morality exists, and all live in constant
fear, Until this state of war comes to an end, all have a right to everything, including another person’s life.
Still living inside his imaginary leviathan, Hobbes stated that in order to escape the horror of the state of
nature, Peace is the first law of nature. The second law of nature for Hobbes is that ‘ we mutually divest
ourselves of certain rights so as to achieve peace’ and third, ‘he is under no illusion that merely
concluding this contract can secure peace. Hobbes also discerns a natural right of every person to every
thing, For him, natural rights comes first and natural law is derived from them. John locke’s take on
Natural right is that since God owned everything in earth and has given it to us to enjoy, there can be no
right of property, but by mixing his labour with material objects, the labourer (us) acquires the right to the
thing he has created. The social contract by John Locke preserved the natural rights to life,liberty and
property, and the enjoyment of private rights. Jean Jacque Rosseau emphasized natural rights as
something that cannot be removed, but, by investing the ‘general will’ with total legislative authority, the
law may legitimately infringe upon these rights

Further into the discussion of Natural law, Raymond wacks denote the fall and rise of natural law. The
formation of legal positivism and moral reasoning created a critic of natural law. Wacks also emphasized
that natural law is concieved of not as ‘higher law’ in the constitutional sense of invalidating ordinary law
but a benchmark against which to measure positive law. John Finnis created a menu of seven basic goods
and basic requirements of practical reasonableness, which comprise, according to Finnis, of the universal
and immutable ‘principles of natural law’. As the chapter is nearing the end, Wacks pointed out that the
central claims of natural law are rejected by legal positivists who deny that the legal validity of a norm
necessarily depends on its substantive moral qualities.
Chapter 2

This chapter is dedicated to the discussion of legal positivism. Several scholars contributed to the
arguments and debates on legal positivism. We start with the definition of positivism, From the
chapter, legal positivision can is defined through it’s contention that the validity of a law can be
traced back to an objectively verifiable source. This means that whatever the law is as long as it
can is from a ‘valid’ source, it posits the necessarry requirements to be a valid law. The
necessary requirment is that it should come from a sovereign power or a norm. In contrast with
natural law, the law is free from any morality and that law emanates from the command of a
ruler.

Different contentions were ellucidated in this chapter, Jeremy bentham and John austin led to the
origin of law in the sovereign’s command, H.LA Hart distinguished the law from social rules and
Hans Kelsen identified the basic norms that validates a fundamental law. The main contention of
the legal positivists is that law should not be entirely bounded on morality and that the law exists
without resorting to the reasons of morality. To understand the law, one must not go behind the
wisdom of the law but treat it as single rule that emanates from the ruler himself.

For Jeremy Bentham he is against the common law system. For him there are uncertainty with
written laws and that I cannot attained reliability with the public standard. As a solution, he
believes in the concept of codification, as it would significantly diminish the judge’s power to
interpret and rather his task would only to administer the law. John Austin’s pointed out that
laws are based on commands and imperatives. He is different from Bentham, for Austin believe
that command is a hallmark of the law while for Bentham it is a single and complete law which
would expressed the will of the authority. Both supported the same categories of law which is the
laws of God and Human Laws. For them, human laws are composed of positive laws and ‘laws
strictly so called’. Both adhered to the utilitarian morality.

For H.L.A Hart, we understand the law by understanding the conceptual context from which it
originated. In comparing to the utilitarianism and command theory of law by Bentham and
Austin, his view of legal positivism is more anchored on law as a command backed by
sanctioned. H.L.A Hart coined the ‘Rule on Recognition’, wherein there are certain conditions
and criteria which will ascertain the validity of a rule or a law. The rationale of Hart lies on the
natural inclination of men to have a rule to to protect themselves and their property.
The law, according to Hart is a system of law. The existence of a legal system required certain
Conditions to be completed. The first condition is the will of the people to follow the law and
the second condition is the acceptance by officials of the rules of change and adjudication. Hart
argued that there are secondary rules of three kinds, the rules of change, rules of adjudication and
lastly the rule of recognition. Without acceptance of these kinds of changes, the legal system
won’t exist.

Another legal positivist, Hans Kelsen, attempt to explain the validity of law from a basic norm.
Basically, if the law lacks basic norms it is not valid. The law is the norm and the basic norm lies
at the base of the legal system, the basic norm determined the validity of a norm or for him.
However, no new norms can be considered a valid law because for it to be valid, each norm
should be authorized by another norm, then it is finally validated by a higher legal norm.
Kelsen’s norms is different from any other ‘norms’ as the his norms prescribe a sanction. In
conclusion for Hans Kelsen’s claim, the legal system is a succession of interconnected norms
that emanates from the most general ‘oughts’. A city council enact an ordinance prohibits illegal
fishing, This prohibition is a norm validated by another norm which is the ‘protection of natural
resources’ they both originated from the same basic norm which is enshrined in the constitution,
in which ‘the state should formulate policies for the protection of marine life’.

The oxford philosopher Joseph Raz leaned towards the hard or exclusive positivism. For him, the
answer for the question of what the law is,is always a fact. Raz argued that the essence of legal
positivism lies on the social thesis, which is one of the principal claims by positivists. The rule of
law for Joseph Raz is a negative virtue, as there is no prima facie duty to obey the law.

Chapter 3
This chapter focused main on the law as an interpretation. The professor Ronal Dworkin mainly
supplied all the contentions under this chapter. We start with the contention that almost every
problem can be solve by the law. Another argument of him is that when there is no more
determinable rule, the problem can be solved by an arbitrary discretion but however if there is
more to law than rules, the answer to the problem could be found in the law itself, he emphasized
the use of references to other legal materials such as jurisprudences and principles.

Further in the discussion, the interpretation of the law in ‘hard’ cases in court also includes non-
rule standards (i.e principles and policies) to reach a decision. This is in contrast with H.L.A
Hart’s contention that law merely consists of rules. Two phases emerged in Dworkin’s
conception of legal reasoning, the first phase maintained that the determination of what the law
requires in case necessarily include interpretative reasoning and the second phase is the premise
that in interpretation it always entails an evaluation.

In his argument about principles and policies is that they have the dimension of weight or
importance when compared to rule’s ‘applicable in all-or-nothing fashion’. ‘Principles’ provide
a reason for deciding the case whereas the ‘rule’, while valid, is decided by what is dictated by
the rule. But the former is not conclusive as it had to be tested against other principles. Principles
and policies are also different, where the principles were a standard to be observed while the
policy sets the standards, where the former describe rights and the latter describe goals.

Dworkin has a scenario on his mind where a judge must construct a system of scheme composed
on abstract and concrete principles that will provide a logical justification for his decision and to
be justified on the basis of principle, constitutional and statutory principles.

Dworkin also contends that the law is like a novel that require interpretation. Comparing the
scenario to judges, the judge are the interpreter of a developing story, or a novelist who needs to
fill the questions and cliffhangers in chapter 1 and interpret it in chapter 2. Like the novelist, the
judge needs to find the right principle and interpret it to the case presented before him. The case
is the developing story, where the judge has it’s own version of the case and logically explain his
decision based on his analysis of his version.

Chapter 4