The Emergence of New Natural Law legal theory and St. Thomas Aquinas

Abstract

In the field of legal theory or Jurisprudence, since 60', companying thedevelopment of International treaty and establishment of nations'Constitution, the human rights and the notion of Justice have becomeparts of the positive laws. Probablely due to that, Natural Law wasdeclared death once again. However, just as H. Rommen noted ``Die ewigeWiederkehr (the eternal return) of natural law{''}, in 80', based onGermain Grisez's theory, so called ``New Natural Law theory ``wasconstituted by John Finnis and by his famous book,{''} Natural law andnatural rights.{''} The new natural law legal theory has become an newtheory to eliminate the disadvantage of legal positivism that used to bemainstream of Jurisprudence after Enlightenment.The article begins with an overview of development of Natural lawtheory, therefore finds out the content of New Natural theory and itsmeaning to Jurisprudence. The focus of this article is especially on theconnection of new natural law theory with St. Thomas Aquinas and thecomparison of it with old traditional natural law theory. In the otherway, the author wish to establish a new approach not only to have adialogue between Natural law theory and legal positivism within legaltheory, but also regard legal system as an adjustment platform of entiresociety and exercise its social function as well as possible.