# Bret Kavanaugh and Natural Law Theory. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 6, 2018, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bret-kavanaugh-and-natural-law-theory/820899 "2018-09-06T18:42:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![etasyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9f8e36/32.png) [@etasyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/etasyde)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2018, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bret-kavanaugh-and-natural-law-theory/820899/21 "2018-09-06T23:50:02Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > So, without a higher morality, if I say that rape of children should be legal and you say it should not, then our views are equally valid, no? Subject only to a vote of the majority perhaps? This discussion risks thread derailment, but as someone whose morality is not derived from a higher power, I can answer this for you: no. Now, excuse me while I go back to lurking. I came here to learn about our potential new Supreme Court Justice, who will probably sit on the court for a significant portion of my adult life. And who, apparently, is quite a bit worse than I originally thought… Please, continue. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bret-kavanaugh-and-natural-law-theory/820899/22 "2018-09-07T00:17:57Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > So, without a higher morality, if I say that rape of children should be legal and you say it should not, then our views are equally valid, no? Subject only to a vote of the majority perhaps? What are you trying to _do,_ here? It seems like you want the other guy to react as if scales just now fell from his eyes, dropping his objection and agreeing with you that we should sign on for stuff that will let us criminalize the rape of children. Maybe you’ll succeed, even. But your argument there — _it_ doesn’t seem to involve that higher morality. Near as I can tell, it’s just an argument that can win someone over even if that person doesn’t actually believe in a higher morality. Am I missing something, here? ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bret-kavanaugh-and-natural-law-theory/820899/23 "2018-09-07T00:30:22Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > In some societies, today, [marrying off child brides to much older men](https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/21/africa/sudan-child-marriage-asequals-intl/index.html) is deemed a-ok. In my book this amounts to rape. In those societies they disagree. > > I do not need a higher power to decide what they are doing is monstrous but their society and their higher power think it is all fine and has been for centuries or longer. Thinking on this some more it seems to me in those places where child brides are allowed it is invoking their religion and their higher power that let’s them deem this ok. We still see some of that here in [polygamous Mormon areas where pervy old men keep a harem of women](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/warren-jeffs-child-bride-horrors-mormon-sect-leader-elissa-wall-a8219246.html), often underage, and cite their higher power as a reason it is ok. Something they would be hard pressed to justify in a good, old fashioned philosophical debate that did not use higher powers to excuse their actions. ---
**Author:** ![Batano](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b487fb/32.png) [@Batano](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Batano)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bret-kavanaugh-and-natural-law-theory/820899/24 "2018-09-07T02:38:53Z")
Without religion bad people will do bad things. It takes religion to get good people to do bad things. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bret-kavanaugh-and-natural-law-theory/820899/25 "2018-09-07T04:34:48Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > As a society we agree that raping children is something we find repugnant. > > In some societies, today, [marrying off child brides to much older men](https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/21/africa/sudan-child-marriage-asequals-intl/index.html) is deemed a-ok. In my book this amounts to rape. In those societies they disagree. > > I do not need a higher power to decide what they are doing is monstrous but their society and their higher power think it is all fine and has been for centuries or longer. > > EDIT: And while interesting this is all a hijack of this thread. Happy to discuss it elsewhere. It’s not a hijack, it is about natural law. We as a society agree that raping children is bad because of our common Judeo-Christian morality. If there is no higher power, then all is good, subject only to the power of the majority, which again, without a higher power, I’m not sure why I should respect a “majority rule.” That also seems like a “somebody higher than me” said it should be a thing. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bret-kavanaugh-and-natural-law-theory/820899/26 "2018-09-07T04:44:24Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > It’s not a hijack, it is about natural law. We as a society agree that raping children is bad because of our common Judeo-Christian morality. If there is no higher power, then all is good, subject only to the power of the majority, which again, without a higher power, I’m not sure why I should respect a “majority rule.” That also seems like a “somebody higher than me” said it should be a thing. If there is a higher power from which our morality comes how is it enforced? Oh yeah…majority rule. If you wondered why we do not have Sharia law as the controlling higher power in the US it is because of majority rule and a majority of the US is not Muslim. One reason why we do not allow child brides here. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bret-kavanaugh-and-natural-law-theory/820899/27 "2018-09-07T05:04:33Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > It’s not a hijack, it is about natural law. We as a society agree that raping children is bad because of our common Judeo-Christian morality. If there is no higher power, then all is good, subject only to the power of the majority, which again, without a higher power, I’m not sure why I should respect a “majority rule.” But, again, the argument you’re making right there seems designed to bother the guy you’re chatting with — provoking a response along the lines of _“oh, no, I sure don’t want to live in that other kind of world”_ from someone who’s telling you they don’t actually go in for that whole Higher Power thing. It’s as if you’re trying to craft an argument that would work all by itself. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bret-kavanaugh-and-natural-law-theory/820899/28 "2018-09-07T05:08:19Z")
(And, of course, the bigger problem is presumably this: what would we say to an alleged Higher Power who assured us that raping children is just fine? I’m guessing, or at least _hoping,_ that the ready answer is _uh, no; that’s not right. I don’t care that you claim to be a higher power; I feel I’m competent to make this call._) ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 11:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bret-kavanaugh-and-natural-law-theory/820899/29 "2018-09-07T11:27:12Z")
> [@Jim\_B](#): > > [This](http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/07/22211/) article is interesting. I didn’t read it all the way thru. But it says as a Roman Catholic, Kavanaugh may think a “natural law” trumps even the Constitution. Maybe that is what the article I read meant. Well, if the Constitution says that the law of gravity doesn’t exist, then both the RCC and the laws of nature disagree. “Laws of nature” and “natural law” (not quite interchangeable, but often used interchangeably) are among those expressions which have multiple meanings and whose meaning changes with the user. In the context of Kavanaugh, I assume it would be the kind of argument used by people who call any behavior they disagree with “unnatural”. That’s not the meanings used in official RCC texts, which use it either to differentiate between “what happens regardless of any legal system” (such as “natural marriage”) and “what happens in the context of a specific legal system” (“marriage recognized by the US Federal government”), or to refer to Gravity and its relatives (which should, as much as possible, be studied according to the scientific method and not taken on faith). ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bret-kavanaugh-and-natural-law-theory/820899/30 "2018-09-07T12:44:20Z")
“Natural law” pretty much has to be Darwin, don’t it? And for monkeys, chimps, Neandertals and us, that means tribes. The lone wolf starves, the pack survives. A genetic disposition to Communism is one of our main survival gimmicks. Maybe we like to think of ourselves as rugged individualists, but it mostly just ain’t so. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bret-kavanaugh-and-natural-law-theory/820899/31 "2018-09-07T14:50:41Z")
Natural law is stated in the Declaration of Independence. Man has God given rights and that in order to secure those governments are founded. As long as governments respect those rights they are legitimate and if they do not they are no longer legitimate. MLK also famously argued that the Jim Crow laws were against natural laws and so they had no legitimacy and the moral thing to do was to ignore them through civil disobedience. Since the writers of the constitution were believers in natural law, many judges believe that it can be used to help interpret what the constitution means. This does not mean that natural law is to be used instead of the constitution but that knowledge of natural law sheds light on what the constitution means. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bret-kavanaugh-and-natural-law-theory/820899/32 "2018-09-07T15:33:53Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > Natural law is stated in the Declaration of Independence. As has already been said, The DofI is not the law of the land-it is merely a statement, filled with flowery language, that we no longer wish to be associated with the British Empire. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2018, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bret-kavanaugh-and-natural-law-theory/820899/33 "2018-09-18T05:16:34Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > I think that at some point everyone reaches for some higher power for their sense of right and wrong, whatever that higher power is. Is genetics a higher power? I’m being serious: Humans are not a blank slate. _Tabula rasa_ is disproven on factual grounds, however philosophically appealing it might be to some people, which means normal people will _never_ come to some conclusions about what’s moral. [Very young children have an innate sense of fairness](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/do-kids-have-a-fundamental-sense-of-fairness/), which squares with [chimpanzees valuing fairness](https://www.livescience.com/26245-chimps-value-fairness.html). _Valuing fairness is genetic unless something is screwed up._ This is a completely predictable, unsurprising result of human beings being social animals, and having to live in a society with other individuals, and having to cooperate with those individuals to survive tough periods. So we don’t owe our sense of right and wrong to the supernatural, but it does exist due to the conditions under which we evolved. This solves (or, rather, obviates) a few problems previous moral philosophers had, by giving moral philosophy a set of axioms, perhaps: A set of moral precepts which are pre-programmed into every normal human being, which don’t have to be derived by the philosophy. Or it might be better to say they’re constraints: If the moral philosophy tries to justify certain actions, it is not a moral philosophy for humans. As far as “Natural Law” as it’s usually understood, it’s slippery enough to be used to justify pretty much anything. Much like any other theory of jurisprudence. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bret-kavanaugh-and-natural-law-theory/820899.md?page=1)