Law and Morals. Prolegomena (I)

In the pages of this study we have emphasized the relation between Law and Morals, between what is just and in just, talking thus not only about the nature of the Law and of the Morals, but also about the relation between the juridical norms and the moral principles. An evaluation of the historical process of the emergence of Law and Morals – be it brief – has enabled us to notice that the Law has evolved step by step from the Moral norms and from the customs of a moral nature, hence the conclusion that the positive juridical norms should also express, in their content, values of a moral nature. In fact, from an ontological point of view, between Law and Morals could not be a divorce, since the notions of “righteousness” and of “justice” themselves are categories of Morals. That is why the theory of juridical positivism, according to which the rule of Law can exist in the absence of Morals since the state is the only source of Law, has no credibility both from a historical and philosophical and from a juridical point of view. Finally, the increasingly higher interest of the philosophers and jurists of our time to perceive and express the content of the nature of Law adequately and, ipso facto, the relation between this one and Morals, was also determined by the international and European legislation regarding the human fundamental rights and liberties