Paradigm Of The Conflict Between Law And Morality:

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Topic: Do you think that Judge Lemuel Shaw's decision in Sims's Case was defensible? Discuss the question with reference to one of the legal theorists studied in the first part of the course (Austin, Hart, Fuller, Dworkin). Paradigm of the Conflict between Law and Morality: Sims’s Case The conflict between legal positivism and natural law theory basically stems from the intervention of moral values into legal system. Legal positivism argues that the spheres of law and morality are distinct i.e. the validity of a law and its moral quality are two different things whereas natural law theory, from a moral point of view, insists on the idea that laws ought to be just. In this manner, the Sims’s Case is a paradigm example of the conflict between moral rules and legal rules. Thus, one’s attitude towards Sims’s Case reflects one’s position on the dichotomy between legal positivism and natural law theory. In this manner, an analysis of Judge Lemuel Shaw's decision in Sims's Case in terms of whether it was defensible is crucial. From a legal positivist’s aspect, I will argue that Judge Lemuel Shaw’s decision was defensible because it was constitutional and valid within the legal system as well as it was constituted in rational and reasonable manner. Besides, Hart’s theory on the rule of recognition as well as his distinction between moral value and legal validity of law are useful to investigate the Sims’s Case. As for the Sims’s Case, according to US Constitution at the time, if a slave manages to escape to a state where slavery is illegal, the slave should be returned to his master by the authorities. According to the law of 1850, when a slave owner or his representative claims that a certain person in a state where slavery is illegal is a fugitive slave, a federal commissioner decides without a due procedure of trial in which the accused person can defend

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