Conclusion

Abstract

This final chapter brings together the ideas from the preceding chapters and presents an overall defense of the natural law account of law. It situates the flaws of legal positivism in that movement’s desire to make a ‘science’ of legal philosophy and also to avoid any entanglement in moral or political theory, given its inclination towards moral relativism. But if moral relativism is true, then the very project of law is incoherent; law is merely the application of force, and no justification can be presented for it. There is then no way to avoid the connection between law and morality: law is an institution that is defined by its moral aim, and its authority is grounded in its capacity to achieve that aim.