Types of Law

 

In other to deepen our knowledge of the nature of law, it is therefore necessary to consider the various types of law. These include:

      1.       Eternal Law.

      2.      Divine Law.

      3.      Natural Law.

      4.      Human or Positive Law.

ETERNAL LAW: The word “eternal” is derived from eternity. It means something that has always existed – it has never changed and will always exist. Eternal laws are laws that are constant, everlasting and universal. A classical example of eternal law is the laws of gravity and motion which are universal all over the world. Thus, eternal law is said to be the foundation of all other laws. That is, every rational law derives more or less from the eternal law. According to Thomas Aquinas, “The natural law is nothing but a participation of the eternal law in a rational creature.” However, to him, eternal law comprises God-given rules governing all creation.

DIVINE LAW: Divine law simply means the law of God or Law from God. A perfect example of divine law is the Ten Commandments as contained in the Holy Bible and Sharia Law as contained in the Holy Qur’an. Divine law is therefore based on the belief that man is incapable of making a valid and just law because of his sinful nature. Hence, man must turn to God who is the governing authority of the universe for perfect law.

NATURAL LAW: The concept of “natural law” means the “law of nature”. We may think of nature as a state of affairs in an original position; the existence of what is unchangeable or universal and indeed an inherent quality in a thing or person.

Some writers uphold nature as that which for the behaviour of creatures generally, whether human beings, animals or plants. For instance, it is the law of nature which makes us sleep, angry, hungry or laugh. The law of nature can either be in its descriptive sense or in its prescriptive sense.

The law of nature in its descriptive sense includes the law of planetary motion, the law of gravitation and the law of relativity which describes the regularity and uniformity with which things happen under certain conditions.

The law of nature in the prescriptive sense is a universal precept or command intended by nature to regulate human behaviour. However, our general emphasis here is with law in its prescriptive sense.

According to Lord Lloyd, natural law is a body of objective moral principles based on the nature of the universe and discoverable by reason. The idea about natural law is based on the notion that it is a body of moral rules which are discoverable through God. But the predominant idea today and indeed for a long time is that it is discoverable by human reason. At this point, the two main conception of natural law are:

                i.     It is an ideal set of principles serving merely as guide to positive law.

         ii.  It is a higher law or a body of moral principles to which positive law must conform to in order to be valid. A natural law theorist, Marcus Tullius Cicero, upholds that the law is the right reason in agreement to nature. To him, man can know the principles of natural law through reasons.

HUMAN OR POSITIVE LAW: Human or positive law is the opposite of the other types of law that are naturally made by God (i.e. eternal, divine and natural law).

The legal positivism or human law asserts that law is posited and laid down by an authority of the society which provides its sole source of validity. They further assert that law within the context of divine, eternal and natural law are far different from what law is in the society. Indeed for legal positivism, nothing is law except the one laid down by the sovereign State. Thus, human law or positive law is man-made. It is law as made or declared by man, that is, by parliament, a delegated authority or other law making bodies to regulate conduct in a given society or State. An example of human law in our immediate society includes laws of Nigeria such as the Nigerian Constitution, the Criminal Code etc.

The legal positivism or human law further agreed that the three other types of laws – eternal, divine and natural law represent what ought to be law (de lege refranda) and not what it is (lex lata) the law.