Abstract
Many legal philosophers consider justice an essential aim of laws and try to study this concept in order to comprehend the essence of law. Typical examples of these efforts are liberalists’ theories of justice, which separate “justice” from “good” and regard the realization of the former in our societies as a main objective of the law. However, laws have an innate function and we can examine that function regardless of any evaluation of moral values such as justice or good. Laws exist in societies where human individuals live with others and have to work to maintain symbiosis. It is a fundamental aim of laws to fulfill the conditions of human symbiosis. We have to conduct scientific research concerning human nature and the structure of human society to find these conditions. We should not examine the aims of laws only by discussing values to the exclusion of the scientific process. Evolutionary psychology, which treats universal characteristics of the human mind and behavior, has an important role in this research. Based on the research of evolutionary psychology, we find “allocation of opportunities for getting resources among group members” as a general condition of human symbiosis. This is one basic aim of laws prior to moral values.
