Synopses & Reviews
"Ministers of the Law is an argument for the importance of the history of Western legal thought for the jurisprudence of political authority. Jean Porter demonstrates that European jurists before the age of legal positivism had placed clear and absolute boundaries on the authority and power of rulers and magistrates. These boundaries were defined by the rights of human beings that transcended the 'rule of law' and constitutions.-Kenneth Pennington Catholic University of America
This book is a theological account of a vital element of human flourishing: authority-natural, political, and legal. Porter argues that positive law, national and international, possesses an authority that may trump anti-terrorist expedients and even general humanitarian considerations.-Nigel Biggar University of Oxford
The author presents an original account of natural law as a 'basis of legitimization' that can validate a variety of political systems and structures of positive law."-Brian Tierney Cornell University
Synopsis
Jean Porter is John A. OBrien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. Her other books include Natural and Divine Law and Nature as Reason.
Synopsis
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.
Table of Contents
The paradox of legal authority -- Authority and the natural law -- Political authority -- Legal authority -- Authority within and beyond the state.