Filosofía

Philosophy

Positivists believe in a separation between the law as it is and the law as it should be. Legal rights and moral rights are notrelated, beyond mere coincidence. Hart believes the method of deciding cases through logic or deduction is not necessarily wrong, just as not necessarilyright to decide cases according to social or moral aims. Hart uses the problem of "the core and the penumbra" to illustrate the idea that laws must berelated to the meaning of the words, not any natural or moral belief. A "core" case would be one that the statute is intended to cover. In the classicexample, a statute that bans vehicles from a park obviously is intended to cover cars. A "penumbra" case would be one not considered by the creators ofthe law, such as an airplane in the example above. A judge interpreting such a law from a positivist viewpoint would look to a definition of thewords of the statute.
The natural law view believes that the creation of law should be based on natural laws or common morals. Laws are viewed based onpurpose, not on meaning of the words. In the vehicle in the park example above, Fuller would say that it would depend on the purpose for banningvehicles from the park. For example, if the purpose were to prevent noise pollution, a bicycle would not be a vehicle for the purposes of the law. Becauseof this focus on purpose instead of meaning, a judge using a natural law interpretation of statutes relies much more heavily on legislative history.