Prominenssi julkisen vallankäytön rajoitteena

Authors

• Martti Vihanto

Abstract

A successful solution of the social problem of conflicting interests presupposes a government that has a monopoly of using force in the suttelement of conflicts. In the hands of self-interested human beings, unlimited governmental power is more or less seriousloy misused, and therefore the government should be constrained by rules which it cannot change at will. The purpose of the paper is to examine whether there are prominent or natural rules of conflict which are so obvious that we can approve them without hesitation once they have been stated and which we do not specifically choose but simply discover by using our reason. The theory of prominent or natural law can be criticized on the ground that it does not provide a generally approved solution to all conceivable conflicts, that it leads to an inefficient allocation of resosurces, and that it does not pay attention to the evolution of law as an open-ended process of discovering new solutions to the conflict problem. Several counterarguments can be raised against these criticisms, and on the whole the theory of natural law appears to be a much more fruitful approach to social philosophy than modern social scientists seem to believe.