Background
Fuller, Lon Luvois was born on June 15, 1902 in Hereford, Texas, United States. Son of Francis Bartow and Mary Salome (Moore) Fuller.
Fuller, Lon Luvois was born on June 15, 1902 in Hereford, Texas, United States. Son of Francis Bartow and Mary Salome (Moore) Fuller.
Student of University California, 1919-1920. Bachelor of Arts, Stanford, 1924, Juris Doctor, 1926.
; children—Francis Brock, Cornelia. Married second, Marjorie D. Chapple, November 5, 1960. Instructor law U. Oregon Law School, 1926-1928, University of Illinois College Law, 1928-1931.
Professor of law Duke U., 1931-1940. Visiting professor law Harvard University, 1939-1940, professor of law, 1940-1948, Carter professor jurisprudence, from 1948, emeritus, to 1978.
According to Fuller, law. ‘the enterprise of subjecting human conduct to the governance of rules’, has both an external and an internal morality. And it is the internal mortality that Fuller is largely concerned with in The Morality of Law. What is the internal morality of law? According to Fuller, it is concerned with the enterprise of effective lawmaking, an essential precondition of good law and one that does not appeal to external standards. It is what he calls a procedural version of natural law. Fuller lists the eight minimum criteria whose presence indicate failure in lawmaking. These are: failure to establish rules; failure to promulgate; improper use of retroactive lawmaking; failure to make comprehensible rules, making contradictory rules; making rules that can not be obeyed; frequent change of rules; and no congruence between the declared rules and their administration in practice. The problem with Fuller’s account of law is that even an evil ruler could respect the inner morality of law but enact laws that are brutal, unjust and indifferent to human welfare. Fuller, however, doubts whether it would be possible for a tyrant to follow iniquitous ends and respect inner morality at the same time, i have treated what I have called the internal morality of law as itself presenting a variety of natural law. It is, however, a procedural or institutional kind of natural law, though.. it affects and limits the substantive aims that can be achieved through law'. Fuller’s answer is only a half-hearted attempt to meet the criticism. In order to give a satisfactory answer some account of substantive naturalism needs to be provided along with the account of procedural naturalism.
Member Massachusetts bar. Member American Academy Arts and Sciences, Delta Chi, Phi Delta Phi, Phi Beta Kappa, Order of Coif.
Married Florence Gail Thompson, August 11, 1926 (deceased.; married second, Marjorie D. Chapple, November 5, 1960. Children: Francis Brock, Cornelia.