In Conflict With Natural Law
Upholding the rule of law can sometimes require the punishment of those who commit offenses that are justifiable under natural law but not statutory law. Heidi M. Hurd raises the example of a battered person who rightly believes that there is a strong probability that her partner will eventually attempt to kill her and her children unless she preemptively kills him. If the law does not permit the acquittal of those who claim self-defense in the absence of an imminent threat of harm, then the person must be punished, or "what will become of the rule of law? For law seemingly ceases to be law if judges are entitled to rethink its wisdom in every case to which it applies and to disregard it whenever it is inferior to the rule that they would fashion. Under the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 the defence of 'loss of self control' was created under s.54 and s.55. This removed the time restraint which allows battered persons the possibility of arguing this defence"
Read more about this topic: Rule Of Law
Famous quotes containing the words conflict, natural and/or law:
“Meantime the education of the general mind never stops. The reveries of the true and simple are prophetic. What the tender poetic youth dreams, and prays, and paints today, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the resolutions of public bodies, then shall be carried as grievance and bill of rights through conflict and war, and then shall be triumphant law and establishment for a hundred years, until it gives place, in turn, to new prayers and pictures.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“To a person uninstructed in natural history, his country or sea-side stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall. Teach him something of natural history, and you place in his hands a catalogue of those which are worth turning round.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“No law is sufficiently convenient to all.”
—Titus Livius (Livy)