Lon Fuller (1902-1978) was a supporter of modern natural law. His focus was on the ‘Reason’ of the human mind and that law and morality are correlated. He did not look back to natural law theories for defining the purpose of social life, rather he responded to this by distinguishing moralities of duty and aspiration.[1] Moralities of duty mean Law as it is, it includes basic requirements of social living wherein some basic rules and guidelines are laid down to make the society function and without which the existence of the society is impossible and Moralities of aspiration means Law as it ought to be, it includes good life of excellence wherein individuals strive to work at their best of capabilities. He believed that law is a purposive system, which means to regulate human conduct and to make it workable, and comply with some requirements to make it effective.
It is not that nature destines us to a particular destiny, rather it depends on humans to create their life and reason to live. We are given n number of changes to make our life productive and at last, it depends on us how we tackle it. there are rules and regulations which are present in our legal system for our betterment and guiding us to live a better and purposive life, however, one cannot be compelled to follow the same and it is solely dependent on the individual to create a life of reason and value. The lawmakers must not create laws out of their whims and fancies but must abide by certain procedural excellences and these must not harm the efficiency of the laws. He believed in the communication and interaction of humans in society and fulfilling the requirements of those procedures.
If we consider a vertical moral scale, then the lower half would constitute the duty and the upper half as the aspiration.[2] The internal morality of law involves both moralities of duty and aspiration. The examples of morality od duty could be activities like, do not steal, Do not murder, etc., they are considered to be moral and important duties towards living a peaceful life in the society while aspiration is striving to live the life to the best achievements. Fuller argues that any legal system which fails to provide the fundamental rules fails to provide the duty and is therefore not meeting the requirements of internal and external morality. He continues to state that a law may not abide by the criteria of aspirational morality, but will still be a law, even if nobody follows it but if there is failure to abide by the aspirational morality then, it will cease to exist as a law.
Therefore, it can be concluded by stating that Lon Fuller’s argument against the paradox of modern natural law theories is in a simple sense that human beings are the best judge and the driving force to sustain their living in the society by helping themselves and others via cooperation and interaction.
[1] Lon Fuller (1902-1978) and the idea of a just methodology of legalism, page 2.
[2] Separation of law and morality, page 10.
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