LJU4801
PORTFOLIO EXAM
DUE DATE: 28 OCTOBER 2025
, LJU4801 Portfolio Exam (October/November 2025) MEMO
DUE 30 OCTOBER 2025
ANSWER ALL FIVE (5) QUESTIONS
QUESTION 1
Carefully consider the following pronouncement made by Nelson Mandela during
his first court statement in Pretoria, 1962:
The law–morality debate in jurisprudence centers on whether law is inherently
connected to moral values or whether law is an autonomous system of rules. Legal
positivism (Austin, Hart, Raz) insists on a separation thesis: law’s validity depends
solely on social facts e.g. parliamentary enactment or judicial precedent), not on moral
content. As H.L.A. Hart summarized, positivists hold that “so long as [an] unjust law is a
valid law, one has a legal obligation to obey it”. Bentham and Austin likewise warned
against confusing “what is” (law) with “what ought to be”; they saw morality as outside
the legal “command.”
In contrast, natural-law theorists (Aquinas, Augustine, Finnis, Radbruch) maintain a
necessary connection: an unjust law is not fully law. Augustine famously declared “Nam
mihi lex esse non videtur, quae justa non fuerit” “an unjust law is not actually a law”.
Under this view, extreme injustice vitiates legal validity. For example, postwar scholar
Gustav Radbruch argued that laws “substantively unjust to an intolerable degree” lose
validity and should yield to justice. Between these poles are hybrid accounts: Hart
(though a positivist) acknowledged that deep moral questions arise in hard cases, and
PORTFOLIO EXAM
DUE DATE: 28 OCTOBER 2025
, LJU4801 Portfolio Exam (October/November 2025) MEMO
DUE 30 OCTOBER 2025
ANSWER ALL FIVE (5) QUESTIONS
QUESTION 1
Carefully consider the following pronouncement made by Nelson Mandela during
his first court statement in Pretoria, 1962:
The law–morality debate in jurisprudence centers on whether law is inherently
connected to moral values or whether law is an autonomous system of rules. Legal
positivism (Austin, Hart, Raz) insists on a separation thesis: law’s validity depends
solely on social facts e.g. parliamentary enactment or judicial precedent), not on moral
content. As H.L.A. Hart summarized, positivists hold that “so long as [an] unjust law is a
valid law, one has a legal obligation to obey it”. Bentham and Austin likewise warned
against confusing “what is” (law) with “what ought to be”; they saw morality as outside
the legal “command.”
In contrast, natural-law theorists (Aquinas, Augustine, Finnis, Radbruch) maintain a
necessary connection: an unjust law is not fully law. Augustine famously declared “Nam
mihi lex esse non videtur, quae justa non fuerit” “an unjust law is not actually a law”.
Under this view, extreme injustice vitiates legal validity. For example, postwar scholar
Gustav Radbruch argued that laws “substantively unjust to an intolerable degree” lose
validity and should yield to justice. Between these poles are hybrid accounts: Hart
(though a positivist) acknowledged that deep moral questions arise in hard cases, and
