Authority is: lawful right on something.
Its always legal
Authority is always legal, as I am saying in this heading.
Authority is also always lawful, as i said in definition.
Authority has to be both legal and lawful.
Legal and lawful are 2 different things.
Legal defines who is allowed to do what. Lawful defines the method, the how of doing whats allowed.
No framework defines any correct way of doing what it not allow to do. The question of correct way arise only for allowed things.
Whats legal
A judge's decision, for example, is always legal as long as he is working in his jurisdiction. If he is working outside his jurisdiction then all his decisions there are illegal.
Whats lawful
Lawful is what don't break any law. It includes the part that defines jurisdiction, so whats lawful is also always legal.
It also includes all other parts of law, so it includes fulfiling restrictions about method / how of one's actions.
Outside whats allowed, method don't matter. As whatever is done no matter how is unlawful anyway.
Lawfulness Check is stricter than Legalness Check.
Lawfulness check looks at all parts of law, not just the one that define jurisdiction. Thats why its stricter than the legalness check.
Even inside one's jurisdiction one is not allowed to do everything. What restricts him is the parts of law that dont define the jurisdiction. One or more such parts define how to do whats allowed to do.
Jurisdiction: One's jurisdiction is one's domain. Its the geographical as well as functional area one is allowed to work in. He is under these two restrictions in his jurisdiction. For example, an executioner's job is to kill when court orders. He is not sent all over the country to do his job, he is limited to work only within a geographical location - lets say a town or a district. He also cannot do lets say masonry
work as well at his job. The geographical and functional limitations together makes his jurisdiction.
Lawfulness Check
The Lawfulness Check put a third restriction: the how to do restriction.
Its legal for an executioner to kill in his geographical area when court orders. Still he has to follow certain rules stated in law that restricts how he do the killings. His authority depends on both working in his jurisdiction and in following the how rules. He for example is not authorized to kill people by burning.A judge cannot give order to hang a person even if he himself saw him killing another person. The judge has to follow the legal process. If he dont do that then he is stepping outside his authority and therefore will be punished.
Recap
The "something" in the definition of authority ("lawful right on something") is the jurisdiction. The word "lawful" covers both what is allowed to whom (whats legal) and the method one must follow to do what he do. Lawfulness Check is superset of legalness check.
It (authority) can or cannot be natural.
Note that I keep talking about law, correctness and incorrectness. I didnt used the words: right, wrong.
Law is a framework. Correctness and incorrectness is defined within that framework. Correct and incorrect don't have any absolute meaning.
Whatever is as per a law, is correct in it. Whatever is not as per a law, is incorrect in it.
Whats right is whats according to natural laws. Whats wrong is whats not according to natural laws.
This is how correct and incorrect differs from right and wrong. Anything that is as per a law is correct in that law. It may be incorrect as per some other law. Whats correct is not necessarily right. Its right only when the law itself is right. A law is right if its as per natural laws.
Natural laws are God's laws. God is consistent. So natural laws don't contradict each other.
Natural laws sets how nature works. Its also how we must work.
For example, law of gravity is a natural law. Its imposed on everything thats has a certain property. Anything that has energy/mass is bound to be affected with gravity and must exert gravity.
Any law that forces lions to eat grass is obviously unnatural. Its because that law is not following natural laws. Its not in nature of lion to eat grass.
If a law is as per nature then authority which is always lawful, when granted under it is also natural.
Husband is ruler on his wife. He is granted that position in God's law. He can therefore make his own rules for his wives, thats what being a ruler means. Since his wives are ordered to follow him they are bound to follow all rules that he make. This is about legality. There is also the second check, of lawfulness, of looking at the entire law and making sure that all of its parts are being followed. Its this second check that restricts what rules a husband can make. He cannot overwork his wives for example, or force them to earn a living. God's law tell those restrictions too.
How to find God's law
People are fallible. Taking the first approach - trying to find God's wish by observing and analyzing nature - is guaranteed to fail at some point. Not everything can be observed, we have limited senses even when augmented with machines. Also, some natural process takes way too much time for us to observe change. There is also the problem of us being inherently unable to analyze certain things, even if given time and precision. We use our brains to analyze so we cannot fully analyze our brain itself. We cannot analyze the entire universe or even half of it because we are in it. Whatever we do will change part of universe and then we have to analyze that change too and so on, a never ending race. See Godel's theorem for both of the last 2 examples.
The only sensible choice is to take God's law as given to us by his prophet Muhammad (saw). He is the prophet of our age.
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