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:
“The conflict between the men who make and the men who report the news is as old as time. News may be true, but it is not truth, and reporters and officials seldom see it the same way.... In the old days, the reporters or couriers of bad news were often put to the gallows; now they are given the Pulitzer Prize, but the conflict goes on.”
—James Reston (b. 1909)
“Chinese were born ... with an accumulated wisdom, a natural sophistication, an intelligent naivete, and unless they were transplanted too young, these qualities ripened in them.... If ever I am homesick for China, now that I am home in my own country, it is when I discover here no philosophy. Our people have opinions and creeds and prejudices and ideas but as yet no philosophy.”
—Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973)
“Our law very often reminds one of those outskirts of cities where you cannot for a long time tell how the streets come to wind about in so capricious and serpent-like a manner. At last it strikes you that they grew up, house by house, on the devious tracks of the old green lanes; and if you follow on to the existing fields, you may often find the change half complete.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)