Religion Law Commons^™

Evangelicals And Catholics Together On Law: Some Personal And Jewish Reflections, Michael J. Broyde

Faculty Articles

At its core this is both my religious and practi­cal problem with the Evangelicals and Catholics Together on Law statement. I sense that according to the Jewish tradition the theology and practice of secular law and justice ought to not be a religious one at all. In the eyes of the Jewish tradition, one should not seek from the secular government a law that maximizes Godliness, never mind observance of God's law. We do not look to secular law to reflect our religious morals-we look to secular law to provide us with life, liberty and the freedom to pursue our …

Prophets, Priests, And Kings: John Milton And The Reformation Of Rights And Liberties In England, John Witte Jr.

Faculty Articles

In this Article, I focus on the development of rights talk in the pre-Enlightenment Protestant tradition. More particularly, I show how early modem Calvinists-those Protestants inspired by the teachings of Genevan reformer John Calvin (1509-1564)-developed a theory of fundamental rights as part and product of a broader constitutional theory of resistance and military revolt against tyranny. With unlimited space, I would document how various Calvinist groups from 1550 to 1700 helped to define and defend each and every one of the rights that would later appear in the American Bill of Rights and how these Calvinists condoned armed revolution to …

The Morality Of Human Rights: A Nonreligious Ground?, Michael J. Perry

Faculty Articles

In the midst of the countless, grotesque inhumanities of the twentieth century, however, there is a heartening story, amply recounted elsewhere: the emergence, in international law, of the morality of human rights. The morality of human rights is not new; in one or another version, the morality is very old. But the emergence of morality in international law, in the period since the end of World War II, is a profoundly important development.

The twentieth century, therefore, was not only the dark and bloody time; the second half of the twentieth century was also the time in which a growing …

The Three Uses Of The Law: A Protestant Source Of The Purposes Of Criminal Punishment, John Witte Jr., Thomas C. Arthur

Faculty Articles

In this article, we focus on the interaction of Anglo-American criminal law and Protestant theological doctrine. We argue (1) that the sixteenth-century Protestant theological doctrine of the uses of moral law provided a critical analogue, if not antecedent to the classic Anglo-American doctrine of the purposes of criminal law and punishment; and (2) that this theological doctrine provides important signposts to the development of a more integrated moral theory of criminal law and punishment in late twentieth century America.

Part One of this Article sets out the theological doctrine of the "civil," "theological," and "educational" uses of the moral law, …