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Higher law   /hˈaɪər lɔ/   Listen
Higher law

noun
1.
A principle that takes precedent over the laws of society.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Higher law" Quotes from Famous Books



... certain that no religious ceremony was performed, but I have no doubt that the two plighted their troth either to each, and that somehow they did become man and wife, if not in the eyes of Canon Law, yet by the sanction of a higher law to which the consciences of honourable men and women appeal against the ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... life had Frida enjoyed anything so much as those first four happy days at Heymoor. She had come away with Bertram exactly as Bertram himself desired her to do, without one thought of anything on earth except to fulfil the higher law of her own nature; and she was happy in her intercourse with the one man who could understand it, the one man who had waked it to its fullest pitch, and could make it resound sympathetically to his ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen

... choice, a majority of the convention would have preferred Seward; but in the four pivotal States there were many voters who believed Seward's antislavery views to be too radical. They shrank apprehensively from the phrase in one of his speeches that "there is a higher law than the Constitution." These pivotal States all lay adjoining slave States, and their public opinion was infected with something of the undefined dread of "abolitionism." When the delegates of the pivotal States were interviewed, they frankly confessed that they could not carry their States ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... deities. Their pastors regarded this as a woeful lapse from grace but no disbelief in Christianity or change of faith was implied. The Khasis had embraced Christianity in the same spirit that animated the ancient disciples of the Buddha: it was the higher law which spoke of a new life and of the world to come. But it was not understood that it offered to take over the business of the local deities, to look after crops and pigs and children, to keep smallpox, tigers and serpents in order. Nobody doubted the existence of spirits ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... is interesting," I said;—"but I do not know how far it could be made to accord with accepted doctrine.... And what of the person able, through knowledge and practice of the higher law, to remain superior to ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... while primarily for the distribution of governmental powers, is, in its last analysis, a formal expression of adherence to that which in modern times has been called the higher law, and which in ancient times was called natural law. The jurisprudence of every nation has, with more or less clearness, recognized the existence of certain primal and fundamental laws which are superior to the laws, statutes, or conventions ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck

... by being altogether free from its authority: hence the subjects of one city or kingdom are not bound by the laws of the sovereign of another city or kingdom, since they are not subject to his authority. In another way, by being under a yet higher law; thus the subject of a proconsul should be ruled by his command, but not in those matters in which the subject receives his orders from the emperor: for in these matters, he is not bound by the mandate of the lower authority, since he is directed by that of a higher. In this way, one who is simply ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas



Words linked to "Higher law" :   precept, principle



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