Ministers of the Law: A Natural Law Theory of Legal Authority (Emory University Studies in Law and Religion | EUSLR)
Digital Verbum Edition
Overview
In Ministers of the Law Jean Porter articulates a theory of legal authority derived from the natural law tradition. As she points out, the legal authority of most traditions rests on their own internal structures, independent of extralegal considerations—legal houses built on sand, as it were. Natural law tradition, on the other hand, offers a basis for legal authority that goes beyond mere arbitrary commands or social conventions, offering some extralegal authority without compromising the independence and integrity of the law.
Yet Porter does more in this volume than simply discuss historical and theoretical realms of natural law. She carries the theory into application to contemporary legal issues, bringing objective normative structures to contemporary Western societies suspicious of such concepts.
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- Offers a constructive account of legal authority as a natural relation
- Takes its starting points from early scholastic legal and political thought, and develops these in conversation with contemporary philosophy of law and political theology
- Seeks to address Christians, making a case that all believers have a stake in safeguarding and promoting ideals of due process and the integrity of the law
- The Paradox of Legal Authority
- Authority and the Natural Law
- Political Authority
- Legal Authority
- Authority Within and Beyond the State
In this book Jean Porter uses the formidable fruits of her decades-long study of natural law to construct a thorough, theological account of a vital, though much disparaged, element of human flourishing: authority—natural, political, and legal. Conversing with contemporary legal philosophy and political theology, Porter argues boldly that positive law, national and international, possesses an authority that may trump anti-terrorist expedients and even general humanitarian considerations. Fluently written, methodically clear, and analytically satisfying, Ministers of the Law deploys a Christian ethic of unusual philosophical sophistication to enlighten issues of great public importance.
Nigel Biggar — University of Oxford
A major contribution to modern debates on the grounding of law. The author presents an original account of natural law as a ‘basis of legitimation’ that can validate a variety of political systems and structures of positive law.
Brian Tierney — Cornell University
Jean Porter accomplishes a most unusual thing. She illuminates and at the same time renders subtle in every hue and shade a most difficult set of questions on natural law. I could not stop reading, and in some places disagreeing with, this splendid work. I think it is her best yet.
Russell Hittinger — University of Tulsa