ABSTRACT
Today's natural lawyers, such as John Finnis, view law from the perspective of its ultimate moral function which is taken to be the ability of law to co-ordinate human activity for the common good. This perspective can be contrasted with the tradition of legal positivism which seeks to examine the concept of law without attending to law's ultimate moral purpose which for Finnis, Robert P George, Mark Murphy and others in the natural law tradition is to co-ordinate society for the common good. Legal philosophers in the natural law tradition tend to take a very positive and upbeat view of law's potential to further the common good of society. Legal positivism seeks neither to praise the institution of law nor condemn the institution of law. Of all approaches to law, legal positivism is the closest to sociology and the social sciences, seeking to analyse law in a neutral, non-ideological way.
