THE WISDOM OF THE LAW

Our legal system has 1 hr payday loans bad credit come from the west that went through the Reformation. Hence all of its legal premises are based on the personal justice and judgement of an infinite, personal God. Before our country came under the western legal system, either the king was the law or people made their own morals. The forerunner of much of our law was a man called Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661) a Scot, who authored Lex Rex (Law is king). John Locke (1632-1704) secularized these concepts and gave the foundation for Anglo-American laws.

“The foundation of a republic is the virtue of its citizens. They are at once sovereigns and subjects. As the foundation is undermined, the structure is weakened . When it is destroyed , the fabric must fall. Such is the voice of universal history.”

“If the instances (of selling influence to procure privately advantageous legislation) were numerous, open, and tolerated, they would be regarded as measuring the decay of public morals and the degeneracy of the times. No prophetic spirit would be needed to foretell the consequences near at hand. Trist v. Child, 88 U.S. (21 Wall.) 441 (1874) ( Swayne , J.)”.

Robet H. Jackson, chief counsel for the United States at the Nuremberg trial was compelled to appeal to permanent values, to moral standards transcending the life-styles of particular societies—in a word, to a “law beyond the law” of individual nations, whether victor or vanquished:

“It is common to think of our own time as standing at the apex of civilizations, from which the deficiencies of preceding ages may patronizingly be viewed in the light of what is assumed to be “progress”. The reality is that in the long perspective of history the present century will not hold an admirable position, unless its second half is fit to redeem its first. These two-score years in this twentieth century will be recorded in the book of years as some of the most bloody in all annals. Two world wars have left a legacy of dead who number more than all the armies engaged in any war that made ancient or medieval history. No half-century ever witnessed slaughter on such a scale, such cruelties and inhumanities, such wholesale deportation of peoples into slavery, such annihilations of minorities. The terror of torquemada pales before the nazi inquisition. These deeds are the overshadowing historical facts by which generations to come will remember small personal loans poor credit this decade. If we cannot eliminate the causes and prevent the repetition of these barbaric events, it is not an irresponsible prophesy to say that this twentieth century may yet succeed in bringing the doom of civilizations.”

“Goaded by these facts, we have moved to redress the blight on the record of our era…

…At this stage of the proceedings, I shall rest upon the law of these crimes as laid down in the charter…

In interpreting the charter, however, we should not overlook the unique and emergent character of this body as an International Military Tribunal. It is no part of the constitutional mechanism of internal justice of any of thesignatory nations… As an International Military Tribunal, it rises above the provincial and transient and seeks guidance not only from International Law but also from the basic principles of jurisprudence which are assumptions of civilization …”

R. Jackson’s clossing address in the Nuremberg Trial, in 19 proceedings in the Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Triunal 397 (1948). For valuble bibliographical reference on the Nuremberg trial, see W. Bishop, International Law 996, 1016-18 (3d ed., 1971).

“In order to discover the rules of society best suited to nations, a suprior intelligence   beholding all the passions of men without experiencing any of them would be needed. This intelligence would have to be wholly unrelated to our nature, while knowing it through and through; its happiness would have to be independent of us, and yet ready to occupy itself with ours; and lastly, it would have, in the march of time, to look forward to a distant glory, and, working in one century, to be able to enjoy in the next. It would take gods to give men laws.” J.J. Rousseau, contract social, BK . 2, ch . 7.

Rousseau was indeed right. Man was not the source of law. In the words of Cicero :

“I find that it has been the opinion of the wisest men that Law is not a product of human thought, nor is it any enactment of peoples, but something eternal which rules the whole universe by its wisdom in command and prohibition. Thus they have been accustomed to say that Law is the primal and ultimate mind of God”. M.T. c icero, De Legibus bk. 2, ch . 4.

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