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Foundations of Law

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Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven)

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Week 1 – les 1

what is “foundation of Law”?
Session 1: theoretical and historical foundations

Why is it important to know the foundations of law?
 Understanding legal systems and their functioning
 Critical evaluation of law
o Where does it come from?
 Navigating legal practice
o Trying to understand different texts and constitutions etc.
 Contextualizing Legal Education and Practice
o It does give more context
 Global and Comparative Perspectives

What are the foundations of law?
 Internal foundations
o Legal doctrines, reasoning, rules and structures
 Without these, it’s difficult to imagine a legal system:
 They don’t have to be the same everywhere
 There are different shapes and forms
o Reasoning:
 The process, the judges, how to come to a conclusion?
o You need the internal foundations to understand the law
o It is within the legal system
 External foundations
o Historical, societal, philosophical influences
o Historical:
 The legal systems are influenced by different big happenings
in the history.
 Example: the common law
o Societal:
 Laws respond to social change and cultural change
o Philosophical:
 Why do we have a legal system?
 What’s the origin?
o It is more a broader context
 What kind of questions does help us to analyse why law works?
o What are the principals of law?
o What are the basic items that all legal systems have?
o Legal systems require some features that they need to
function/work

Historical foundations of Western legal systems:

1

,  Code of Hammurabi
o Codification, written law
 That’s a important term to stay transparent and stable
because everybody can see how the rules are written down
o This is the oldest legal code (1800 V.C.)
o Mesopotamia
o There are different punishments and that’s important fort he
foundation of law
 Greek Law
o Plato, Aristotle: Natural Law
o An important development is the relation between law and justice
o The Greek people are worried about the origin of justice
o Law is not jus tan addition of different rules
 Roman Law
o Civil Law vs. Law of Nations
o The Justinian codification
o Laws could be interpretative

Historical foundations of Western legal systems
 Canon Law ( Religious Influence on Law)
o Religious influence is really important because it gavve a legal frame
work
o It play(ed) a very important role
o It’s not justice in the Greek sense but in the religious sense
 Common Law (England: Case Law, Stare Decisis)
o Is developed and involved in England
o Star decisisa;
 You do not deviate unless it is for a very important reason
o It’s more flexible
o They exported this system to a other countries like America
 Enlightenment Thought (Social Contract Theories, Hobbes, Locke
o They focused on concepts
o Example; Locke and the natural rights “life, liberty and property”
o They changed the focus
o They see law more like a product of reason and consent
 Constitutionalism
o This is about revolutions
 American revolutions
 The French revolution

Theoretical foundations of law

 How can we bring harmony in these theories?
 Natural law
 Legal positivism
 Legal realism
 Critical Legal Studies

2

,Natural Law Theory
 Laws are derived from inherent moral principles
o These are principles that exist independent from the human
influence
 Aristotle, Aquinas and later thinkers like Kant
 Aristotle; for a law to be valid, it need to be in accordance with the
morality
o Morality is an inherent part of law
o He thought that the natural law reflected the will of God
 Valid law must align with morality or justice
 Aristotle: the content of ‘natural’ justice (or universal law) is set by nature
o Which renders it immutable and valid in all communities

Legal Positivism
 law is valid if created by proper authority and follows established
procedures
 Important authors of L.P. are Hart, Austin
 Separation of law and morality
 There is a big difference with nature law

The existence of a law is one thing, Its merits or demerits are
another thing. Whether a law be, is one inquiry; whether it ought
to be or whether it agrees with a given or assumed test, is
another and a distinct inquiry.” – John Austin

Legal Realism
 This lays the focus on how law functions in practice, not just in theory
o Natural law and legal positivism had more focus on
constitution/abstract concepts
 It focus on how law actually works, so it is less abstract
o Judges, social context and institutional behaviour shape the law
 Legal systems are influenced by social things the opinion of
the judge
 Law is not logical because there are influences

The life of the law has not been logic: it has been
experience.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Critical Legal studies
 Law as a tool of power, reinforcing social hierarchies
 Legal decisions often reflect the interests of dominant (social) groups
 It questions the neutrality of law
 This is a more recent and also more radical theory, but it’s very actual
 Law is not neutral or objective, it is for power
 Law can’t be independent of politics or ideologies

3

,  Question “ which theory do you like more or less, what
are the positive/negative points”

Institutional Foundations of Law
 Role of courts
o Judicial interpretation, precedent
o Courts are the institutions that are responsible
 What does the court do?
o They have a crucial role
o It are the courts who ensure that the law is applicable correctly and
systematically
 The government controls the courts
 Legislatures and law-making

Legal Reasoning and precedent
 Precedent:
o Once a supreme court makes a decision, the lower court must
respect and applicable that decision
o This means that the high courts have a big responsibility
 Are the precedents unique fort he common law?
o No, we departed from the supreme courts
o It used to be unique, but it is more and more common in legal
systems
 How legal reasoning evolves through case law and statutes
o They form the basis of how it is formed
 You have to understand the institutional foundations

Globalisation and the Foundations of law
 Interaction between national and international legal systems
 International institutions shaping domestic law (UN, ECtHR, ICC)
 Globalisation
o It influences the national legal system
 How?  by setting standards
 What is a war? What is a crime against humanity?
o Legal systems are also entities so it has to interact with other legal
system
o This interaction between different legal systems is very important
o This interaction create different challenges and opportunities
 As an example: which law do you need to applicable?
 International law or national law?
 You have extern legal systems
o The different systems need to interact
 As example: the own foundations

Session 2: what is Law?

What is Law ( like Hart’s Perspective)

4

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