law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior, with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been variously described as a science and as the ar ...

and

ethics Ethics is the philosophy, philosophical study of Morality, moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates Normativity, normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches inclu ...

, universal law or universal principle refers to concepts of legal legitimacy actions, whereby those

principles A principle may relate to a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of beliefs or behavior or a chain of reasoning. They provide a guide for behavior or evaluation. A principle can make values explicit, so t ...

and rules for governing human beings' conduct which are most universal in their acceptability, their applicability, translation, and

philosophical Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

basis, are therefore considered to be most legitimate.

Debate

Cognition, experiences and intuition are the starting points of legal thought, which has to be seen through the glasses of universality and abstractness. Notwithstanding this assumption, "legal principles 1) do not contain only logic and reason and that 2) they can be different in different situations despite their equal naming. The legal rules can be identical in different legal orders while they carry different wants". On one side "universality, abstraction, and theory itself are defined in a way that undermines the perspectives of some while privileging the perspectives of others"; on the other side, "the aspiration to universality itself may stand in the way of its realization if it seals off from view the bias built into legal norms, public practices, and established institutions".Martha Minow, ''Beyond Universality'', University of Chicago Legal Forum, Vol. 1989, pp. 137.

Debate

References

See also