Fidelity To Law Meaning

If law is simply what the sovereign says, then fidelity could require enforcing obviously evil decrees. The Nuremberg Trials rejected this, establishing that "following orders" or "fidelity to positive law" is no defense for crimes against humanity.

Fidelity to law is essential for maintaining the rule of law, which is a fundamental principle of democratic societies. The rule of law provides a framework for governing society, and ensures that individuals are treated fairly and justly. It also provides a mechanism for resolving disputes and addressing grievances, which helps to promote social stability and cohesion. fidelity to law meaning

When faced with systemic injustice, thinkers like Martin Luther King Jr. argued that a citizen can actually demonstrate the highest form of fidelity to law through civil disobedience . In his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail , King argued that one who breaks an unjust law that conscience tells him is wrong, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment to arouse the conscience of the community, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law. If law is simply what the sovereign says,

Nowhere is the meaning of fidelity more contested than in the judiciary. A judge’s oath typically requires them to uphold the law "without fear or favor." But how? This question divides legal theory into competing schools of "interpretive fidelity." The rule of law provides a framework for

The great American judge Learned Hand captured the tension perfectly: "A society so riven that the spirit of moderation is gone, no court can save; but a society which has lost the habit of fidelity to law, no court can even serve."

Lon L. Fuller, Hart's Harvard colleague, was appalled. In his rejoinder, published in the same volume of the Harvard Law Review under the title "Positivism and Fidelity to Law — A Reply to Professor Hart," Fuller argued that Hart's positivism dangerously severed law from its moral foundations. For Fuller, law is not merely a system of commands backed by sanctions; it is a purposive activity aimed at achieving social order through the governance of rules. A legal system, to be worthy of the name, must respect what Fuller called the "inner morality of law": eight principles of legality requiring that laws be general, promulgated, prospective, clear, non-contradictory, possible to obey, stable over time, and administered as they are written.