fails in its purpose, then it is your right and duty to try for and bring
about a change.(23)
The idea of a "higher law" is not newly born. "The Ancient
Greeks – among them Sophocles, Heraclitus, Plato, and Aristotle –
contributed much to the emergence and development of the
concept of a divinely-inspired, universal, immutable, and eternal
natural law. They wrote, for instance, that ‘all human laws are
sustained by the one divine law.’ Plato’s theory of human law as an
imperfect replica of an ideal form that exists only in the world of
Ideas is another expression of much the same view. But for Plato,
and Greeks in general, the law of nature was ‘no more than a basis
of comparison – an intellectual standard’ and ‘did not serve as a
means for concrete juridical decisions.”(24) As stated by Corwin,
“Aristotle is led to identify the rational with the general in human
laws. Putting the question in his Politics whether the rule of law or
the rule of an individual is preferable, he answers his own inquiry in
no uncertain terms. ‘To invest the law then with authority is, it
seems, to invest God and reason only; to invest a man is to introduce
a beast as desire is something bestial, and even the best of men in
authority are liable to be corrupted by passion. We may conclude
then that the law is reason without passion and it is, therefore,
preferable to any individual.’”(25)
It remained, however, for the Stoics in Greece after 300 B.C., and
later in Rome, to erect on this philosophical base an authentic
natural law theory. Bracton, a judge of the King's Bench in the reign
of Henry III, prepared a monumental work based on the study of
Roman law. We find the following passage in his treatise which
explains the view-point of the Romans in respect of law. It says:
“The king himself ought not to be subject to man, but subject to God
and to the law, for the law makes the king. Let the king then attribute to
the law what the law attributes to him, namely, dominion and power,
for there is no king where the will and not the law has dominated.”(26)
The point has, however, been stated very lucidly by Cicero, the great
Roman jurist and orator, in a passage in the Republic which runs as
follows:
There is in fact a true law – namely right reason – which is in accordance
with nature, applies to all men, and is unchangeable and eternal. By its
commands, this law summons men to the performance of their duties;
Islam: A Challenge to Religion 225