Analysis Of Fuller's Internal Morality Of Law

The American jurist, Lon Fuller, developed a secular natural law approach, which believes that in order for the law to be legally valid, the law must conform to the “internal morality of law”. He rejects Hart’s theory on the strict separation between law and morality. He believes legal system has the specific purpose of “subjecting human conduct to the governance of rules”. In this purposive enterprise, it is necessary to have a connection between “law” and “inner morality”. This is because these fundamental procedures are accepted as something good, as contributing to a good order, hence they are also counted as moral rules. In this paper, I will evaluate whether the “morality” is satisfied in his theory with supporting arguments on the value and immoral acts as well as the arguments against the critiques made by the positivist to determine if people have the moral obligation to obey the legal rules that conform to his internal morality of law.

2. Fuller on The Internal Morality of Law

2.1. The definition of Internal Morality of Law

The internal morality of law in Fuller’s theory is the eight desiderata that he has identified. They are:

(1) Existence,

(2) Published,

For example, Desiderata (6) Possible to comply with, which means the law should be accepted by the people whom are affected. For instance, if the government would like to impose an extreme high tax rate onto a specific social group, this law would probably not be accepted by that particular social group. It is also immoral to issue a law that is targeted, or against, or unfair to a specific group of people. Additionally, this may fail the desiderata (8) where the rules have to be followed by officials, which means the law should be followed by everyone, no matter you have power or not. This can be argued that it states the equality of