LEGAL THEORIES

1. NATURAL LAW THEORY

The natural law theory is stated to have existed without even the requirement of
human understanding or any kind of political order or legislature. To be explained
further, natural law incorporates the idea that humans understand the difference
between “right” and “wrong” inherently. Essentially, it concludes that human beings
are not taught natural law; they initiate it by making good and right decisions.
Therefore, it is said to be discoverable through the exercise of reason.

The theory of natural law was known to the ancient Greeks but then elaborated by
many philosophers. Some important philosophers who played a role in the
development of natural law include Aristotle, Plato, and Thomas Aquinas.

Natural law is important because it is applied to moral, political, and ethical systems
today. It has played a large role in the history of political and philosophical theory
and has been used to understand and discuss human nature.

The first example of natural law includes the idea that it is universally accepted and
understood that killing a human being is wrong. However, it is also universally
accepted that punishing someone for killing that person is right. The idea
demonstrates that without the requirement of legislation, such beliefs are
something that human beings understand inherently as wrong, without the
requirement of law.

2. POSITIVIST THEORY

Legal positivism is the thesis that the existence and content of law depends on social
facts and not on its merits.

The positivist thesis does not say that law’s merits are unintelligible, unimportant, or
peripheral to the philosophy of law. It says that they do not determine whether laws
or legal systems exist. Whether a society has a legal system depends on the presence
of certain structures of governance, not on the extent to which it satisfies ideals of
justice, democracy, or the rule of law. What laws are in force in that system depends
on what social standards its officials recognize as authoritative; for example,
legislative enactments, judicial decisions, or social customs. The fact that a policy
would be just, wise, efficient, or prudent is never sufficient reason for thinking that it
is actually the law, and the fact that it is unjust, unwise, inefficient or imprudent is
never sufficient reason for doubting it. According to positivism, law is a matter of
what has been posited (ordered, decided, practiced, tolerated, etc.). Austin thought
the thesis “simple and glaring”. While it is probably the dominant view among
 analytically inclined philosophers of law, it is also the subject of competing
interpretations together with persistent criticisms and misunderstandings.
3. INTERPRETIVIST OR CONSTRUCTIVIST THEORY

Constructivism primarily seeks to demonstrate how core aspects of international

relations are, contrary to the assumptions of neorealism and neoliberalism, socially
constructed. This means that they are given their form by ongoing processes of
social practice and interaction. Alexander Wendt calls two increasingly accepted
basic tenets of Constructivism that the structures of human association are
determined primarily by shared ideas rather than material forces, and that the
identities and interests of purposive actors are constructed by these shared ideas
rather than given by nature. This does not mean that constructivists believe that
international politics is ideas all the way down, but rather that international politics
is characterized both by material factors and ideational factors. Central to
Constructivism are the notions that ideas matter, and that agents are socially
constructed.

Constructivist research is focused both on causal explanations for phenomena, as

well as analyses of how things are constituted.[6] In the study of national security,
the emphasis is on the conditioning that culture and identity exert on security
policies and related behaviors. Identities are necessary in order to ensure at least
some minimal level of predictability and order. The object of the constructivist
discourse can be conceived as the arrival, a fundamental factor in the field of
international relations, of the recent debate on epistemology, the sociology of
knowledge, the agent/structure relationship, and the ontological status of social
facts.

4. REALIST THEORY

A realist theory of law has two elements, realism and naturalism. Realism in the
tradition associated with Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Nietzsche aims to describe
how things really are without romantic or moralizing illusions. In the legal case, we
want to know what law and legal institutions are like in reality, not what we might
wish them to be. Realists do not suppose that the way things are will make moral
sense or turn out to be morally defensible. Naturalists offer explanations of legal
phenomena that only invoke entities and mechanisms that figure in successful
empirical sciences, naturalists, importantly, are not physicalists. Realism and
naturalism about law, in the preceding senses, lead us to Hart’s positivism about
legal validity, the thesis that legal reasoning under-determines judicial decision in
some range of cases, the recognition that law operates primarily outside courts; and
skepticism about natural law theories as ideological delusions. Final versions of this
essay will appear in Spanish and Portuguese translations in journals in South
America.
5. THE CRITICAL THEORY

Critical legal studies is a theory which states that the law is necessarily intertwined
with social issues, particularly stating that the law has inherent social biases.
Proponents of CLS believe that the law supports the interests of those who create
the law. As such, CLS states that the law supports a power dynamic which favors the
historically privileged and disadvantages the historically underprivileged. CLS finds
that the wealthy and the powerful use the law as an instrument for oppression to
maintain their place in hierarchy. Many in the CLS movement want to overturn the
hierarchical structures of modern society and they focus on the law as a tool in
achieving this goal.

6. POLICY SCIENCE PERSPECTIVE

Political theory is concerned mainly with the foundations of political community and
institutions. It focuses on human nature and the moral purposes of political
association. To clarify these concepts, political theorists draw on enduring political
writings from ancient Greece to the present and on various writings by moral
philosophers. Political theory also focuses on empirical research into the way
political institutions function in practice. Here political theorists subject beliefs about
political life found in important political writings to re-examination in the light of
ongoing human behavior. In either case, political theory seeks to ultimately deepen
political thinking and to spur citizens to responsible and creative political action.