Positive law is a little-known phrase. Meanwhile, intrinsic natural law remains an enigma. Most likely because it is little spoken of and understood even less. The reason for this is inescapable. Most people think of ‘law’ as a prescription, that which must be obeyed as something to be done or not done. This notion of ‘law’ being an ’instruction’ is man-made ‘Positive law,’ which includes common law. On a global scale, the idea of law as a decree, a commandment or statute is commonly believed to be true.
Law is positive law today
Today, Law, most usually refers to some national system of social regulation imposed by the incorporated rulers of a nation-state, coordinated by their incorporated agents and servants. Positive law may also refer to regulatory systems to which the rulers and diplomatic agents of various nation-states have agreed. All such man-made regulation goes under the academic umbrella label of 'positive law.’
Individual states or countries describe what powers, immunities, rights, duties, claims and liabilities legally attach to the social positions, roles and functions of a representative of the people, a minister, a citizen, a pensioner or a police officer, and so on. This is much in the same way that the rules of chess inform what a king, queen, knight, pawn or other piece is, and what it can do or cannot do. Thus man-made statute law pertains primarily to 'artificial persons', to their social positions, roles and functions within social organisations and especially to a state or a group of states. Human beings serve only to the extent that they must supply the physical and intellectual labour required by those positions.
Implications of Positive law
What results is that human beings are reduced to the status of mere objects, or social animals, to which social action can be applied; this condition is analogous to the relations between cattle and a farmer, or between several pets and their caretaker. That is no accident. Indeed it is the desire of [philosophical] socialists, who accept and expressly desire that we accept that: 1) All individuals belong to society, thus it has the right to make us obey its prescriptions; and 2) Society should take care of us because we are incapable of decently managing our own lives and affairs.
To the contrary, the law of gravity is not devised by the minds of Men. It exists in nature and depends on the consequences of material happenings. For example, a ball rolls downhill when released, and a curtain falls at the end of a concert when released from above. The same applies to natural law, meaning that it governs the consequences of what we choose to enact, never once prescribing our behaviour in advance.
It must be made abundantly clear that Man-made is to be obeyed, whilst intrinsic natural law is to be respected, by which all consequences are self-chosen, not legislated. It follows, therefore, that the positive law variety has no logical or necessary connection with human life and action.
The truth of Intrinsic Natural Law
Regrettably, since students nowadays get most of their information about natural law from positivists, whose understanding of it is virtually nil, they can only think of natural law as another set of rules, verdicts and decisions that are not 'posited' by the societal authorities, but by some mythical, supernatural or impersonal authority. Natural law is therefore considered an alternative system of rules, verdicts and decisions that supposedly applies to, or regulates, the same things as does man-made law. Yet nothing could be further from the truth.
Natural law, being an order of things, can only be respected or disrespected. Respecting a person does not imply obeying that person any more than respecting an old building implies obeying it. Consequently, intrinsic natural law and (Positive) statute law are not alternative systems of rules that apply to the same thing. The natural law is the inherent law of natural persons, and positive law is the (invented) command of artificial persons.