Essay
Is natural law law?
'Natural law is not law. It is only an opinion about what law ought to be.' Discuss.
issue
Whether a moral standard that has not been adopted by a legal source can count as law, and what follows for rights under the 1991 Constitution.
rule
Natural law claims that validity depends on a moral test. Bentham treated appeals to nature as the speaker's preferences offered as a standard, and called natural rights nonsense upon stilts. Austin identified law with a sovereign's command backed by a sanction. In Sierra Leone, section 170 lists the sources, section 171(15) makes the Constitution supreme, and section 28 enforces Chapter III.
application
The quotation is a fair statement of classroom positivism, and it is right about an unenacted moral opinion. A belief that pork should not be eaten, or that a contract is unfair, is not a rule of decision until a source adopts it. The quotation fails if it is used to say that Chapter III is not law. Those rights are law because the Constitution enacts them, not because a judge prefers them. Austin's command theory is also too thin. It struggles with power-conferring rules and with a constitution that limits the sovereign. Bentham's warning still matters: a student who strikes down an Act for contradicting a private conscience is doing what he mocked.
conclusion
Natural law, as a free-standing moral theory, is not law. Moral claims become law when a recognised source adopts them. In Sierra Leone the Constitution has adopted some of them, and those provisions are law in the ordinary positivist sense.