ABSTRACT
Natural law is the theory that the basis of any legal system should or must be a set of fundamental principles derived from unchanging notions of the just and the good found in nature, especially in human or divine nature. Legal positivism, most prominently in the work of H. L. A. Hart, argues that there is no defensible basis for natural law values and that law is whatever a regime sets up as law. One of the earliest and most prominent works in the interplay of literature and law is Sophocles’s Antigone, which pits primal familial duties against legal interdictions. Regimes which show an unjust disregard for principles of natural law are likely to trample as well on principles of fundamental justice. Fundamental justice is a sense that in order for a judgment or procedure to be just it must follow basic principles of fairness and due process: the right to be heard before an impartial judge.
