In The Mind of the Maker, Dorothy Sayers spends the first chapter differentiating between a “law” of nature, that cannot be defied (no matter how much you try or wish you could), and “law” of the arbitrary human pronouncement sort. Getting the two mixed up in dialogue is the source of all sorts of trouble.
The second condition [of a man-made law] is, of course, that the arbitrary law shall not run counter to the law of nature. If it does, it not only will not, it cannot be enforced. Thus, if the [Cricket authority] were to agree, in a thoughtless moment, that the ball must be so hit by the batsman that it should never come down to earth again, cricket would become an impossibility. A vivid sense of reality usually restrains sports committees from promulgating laws of this kind; other legislators occasionally lack this salutary realism.
When the laws regulating human society are so formed as to come into collision with the nature of things, and in particular with the fundamental realities of human nature, they will end by producing an impossible situation which, unless the laws are altered, will issue in such catastrophes as war, pestilence and famine. Catastrophes thus caused are the execution of universal law upon arbitrary enactments which contravene the facts; they are thus properly called by theologians, judgments of God.
-Dorothy Sayers, The Mind of the Maker, Ch.1
Laws regulating human society that go against the laws of nature… “Cap and Trade” anyone?