wikipedia
English
Etymology
1651: From Thomas Hobbes: The Leviathan.
Phrase
en-noun
- law Man-made law, as compared to natural law, prescribed by express enactment or institution.
#* 1651:We know that generally in all commonwealths, the execution of corporal punishments, was either put upon the guards, or other soldiers of the sovereign power; or given to those, in whom want of means, contempt of honour, and hardness of heart, concurred, to make them sue for such an office. But amongst the Israelites it was a positive law of God their sovereign, that he that was convicted of a capital crime, should be stoned to death by the people. Thomas Hobbes. The Leviathan.
#*In the state of nature, on account of the absence of any authority or order of positive law, there are also no moral norms of conduct (no distinction between good and evil, or just and unjust), for we cannot derive moral norms from nature. Moral norms appear only with the creation of the state, the establishment of rules of positive law, and the establishment of legal institutions. 1
#*'Law', indeed, now usually refers to some national system of social regulation -- a system of social regulation imposed by the rulers of a nation-state and otherwise coordinated by their agents and servants. By extension, 'law' now refers also to regulatory systems to which the rulers and diplomatic agents of various nation-states have agreed. All of this goes under the academic label of positive law, which covers any one of the many particular imposed ('posited') systems of regulation by legal rules that we find in various politically organized societies.2
#*In laws, that which is natural bindeth universally; that which is positive, not so. --Hooker.
References
w:Law.
ru:positive law
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