What is the relationship between law and philosophy?
My interest in this question stems from my recent awareness of the legal processes and the justice system as a whole. I am taking Law in school currently and while exploring the legal texts, precedent cases and restrictions, I realized there is a common theme of interpretation in the subject matter we study. Law is a subject based on interpretation and rendition of laws, the Constitution and our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Though the legal processes are different for every country, the question of how laws originated and evolved is always being asked. Along with far more complex questions such as when should laws be changed? What determines the necessity to change, create or remove a law? Who should have this power? Are the principles of our justice system being enforced fairly? The topic of philosophy explores existential questions and seeing that law governs and regulates the action of the people and philosophy explores knowledge and reasoning of existence, morality, thought and knowledge, I’m interested to see how these two things affect each other. Further, like law, philosophy is subjective and relies heavily on interpretation. I’m curious to see how the laws from our histories were created in accordance with philosophy and if the same principles apply today.
Hello Rasee,
I often think about the correlation between philosophy and law but I’ve never considered that maybe the morals we used to believe in are outdated because I just assumed laws are updated constantly. You bring up a good question that makes me think maybe what our laws are based on are old ideas.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/criminal-code-outdated-justice-discrimination-1.3853810
https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/just/04.html
https://www.britannica.com/topic/philosophy-of-law
I am interested to see what you are going to do in the future!
Shieva Mokhtarnameh