A Philosophical Happy Hour on the relationship between morality and law, and what falls to our exercise of choice. St. Thomas Aquinas defines law as an ordinance of reason ordered to the common good, promulgated by one who holds responsibility for the community.  This broad but precise definition allows us to distinguish kinds of law […]

St. Thomas defines law in Summa Theologiae I-II q. 90 aa. 1-4. It is an ordinance of reason for the sake of the common good made by someone bestowed with the care of the common good and promulgated. Hence, human law, which St. Thomas treats in I-II q. 95, must share the above definition in […]

“Those ignorant of history are condemned to repeat it” — an oft-iterated maxim that is both often ignored, and, perhaps, misleads. Some history ought, perhaps, to be repeated. (Originality is seldom all that it is praised for being.) Nevertheless, an ignorance of history does have pernicious consequences. It makes us narrow-minded, arrogant, selfish, and ungrateful. […]

Can we understand the law in a non-philosophical manner? Can the jurist afford to disdain questions of philosophy? We must have consensus in certain disciplines, and the positive law is one of them—but what grounds this consensus? Must we have a philosophical theory of the natural law? Can law truly be itself without a relation […]

Law: the word, to many, conjures images of the courtroom or a legislature—ponderous tomes of tediously-written jargon rendering a complex web of oft-arbitrary-seeming stipulations and impingements.  So prevalent is this imagery that to speak of the “natural law” sounds often like a mere metaphor.  Exacerbating this “metaphorical” tenor of the phrase has been its use […]