WordNet
n. a principle that takes precedent over the laws of society
Usage examples of "higher law".
Mortal folks can be driven over the line by native customs or a notion that they're obeying some older, higher law.
These concepts can even be cast into a notation wherein each higher law overrides the ones below it whenever two come into conflict: Do no harm, be useful to others, do not destroy yourself.
Being asked if he had anything to say for himself before sentence of death should be passed upon him for violating the military law forbidding cowardice and desertion, he said he had not desired to violate that law, but had been obliged to obey a higher law which took precedence of it and set it aside.
Hence, in fact, the law of the Conditions of Existence is the higher law.
All has been done according to the laws of man and the higher Law of Heaven.
All has been doneaccording to the laws of man and the higher Law ofHeaven.
His police were needed to allow the law to be broken - which was not the idea that Captain Zadin's immediate superiors had in mind - and to stop the interference of others willing to break a higher law to keep him from his job.
Under scrutiny, however, it turned out that resort to higher law was not even necessary in Elian's case.
The only hope I had was that the ordination binds all priests to Higher Law.
That he hadn't meant that he perceived some higher law in operation-though whether that was friendship, pity, the claim of his earbsacbd, or something else, I didn't know.