Mitchell Hamline Faculty Of Law
Civil procedure and criminal process concern the principles that courts should comply with as a trial and appeals proceed. In distinctive circumstances defences can apply to particular acts, such as killing in self defence, or pleading insanity. Another instance Law is within the 19th-century English case of R v Dudley and Stephens, which examined a defence of “necessity”. Three crew members and Richard Parker, a 17-year-old cabin boy, were stranded on a raft. They argued it was necessary to kill the cabin boy to preserve their own lives.
John Austin’s utilitarian reply was that law is “commands, backed by risk of sanctions, from a sovereign, to whom people have a habit of obedience”. Natural lawyers on the opposite side, corresponding to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, argue that law displays essentially moral and unchangeable laws of nature. The idea of “natural law” emerged in ancient Greek philosophy concurrently and in connection with the …
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