CLAT 2020 PG

Read the following passage carefully and then answer the accompanying questions employing the concepts provided in the passage:

The Archimedean point of Habermas‘ philosophy of law is not the concept of natural law. His approach to positive law differs from both Han‘s and Hobbes‘. For him, positive laws are democratically established human artifacts. In the democratic procedure for legislatures to make laws, even if there may be arguments appealing to the concept of natural law, democratically established positive laws are not duplications of natural laws. Instead, they differ from natural laws both in content and form. The legitimacy and validity of positive laws come exclusively from the democratic process in which laws are established and published. By the same token, the rationality of positive laws comes exclusively from a democratic legislature based upon rational communication under the guidance of the communicative rationality. In social management, morality is complementary to positive law. But positive law is not subordinate to [1]. Instead, the two are parallel institutions. Habermas shares with Han and Hobbes the view that positive laws have two salient features. First, they are written and publically published. Second, they are backed by those who have a monopoly on force. The second feature of positive laws is dubbed by Habermas as the ―facticity‖ of law. The facticity or social reality of positive laws is that they are compulsory and backed by sanctions. As Habermas puts it, ―Such laws appear as the will of a lawgiver with the power to punish those who do not comply; to the extent that they are actually enforced and followed, they have an existence somewhat akin to social facts.‖. Also, for Habermas, as it is for Han and Hobbes, positive law differs from natural law in the sense that positive law is a social institution, a human artifact, not a natural institution. Positive law comes into existence by a historical and public action—that is, the democratically legislation of it and its being publically published.