Over one hundred years ago – before Watergate, junk bonds, Enron, or the Great Financial Crisis – the Supreme Court of the United States declared,
“The foundation of a republic is the virtue of its citizens. As the foundation is undermined, the structure is weakened. When it is destroyed, the fabric must fall.”
Simply put, when the level of public virtue falls, our interpretation of justice begins to erode with it.
Which raises some questions:
By what standard should law be established?
If our only criterion for judging ethical action is the current collective conscience, what valid standard of morality remains?
Should law be simply a reflection of the current social conscience?
Do we want a legal system that is just the tool of current public opinion?
Is there a “higher law” on which civil law must be grounded?
What does theology have to do with law?
Can we have law without theology? When the Common Law has been grounded in Christian values, what happens to society’s legal system when that society abandons Christianity?
Martin Luther spoke to this question in his day:
“Where there are not people who have been made wise through the Word and the laws, there bears, lions, goats, and dogs hold public office and head the economy.”
In his newly republished The Law Above the Law noted apologist-theologian-clergyman-lawyer-author John Warwick Montgomery takes on this very contemporary question for our own day, setting out “to recover the proper connection between positive law and biblical revelation.”
Table of Contents
1. The Case for “Higher Law”:
The Need
The Dilemma
The Solution
Benefits to the Prodigal Lawyer
2. Witch Trial Theory and Practice:
The Issue Sharpened
Torture and “Exceptional” Procedure in Continental Law
Biblical Influence on Anglo-American Law
The Desanctification Process
The Question of Legal Remedy
Some Witch Trial Lessons Summarized
3. Legal Reasoning and Christian
Apologetics
Appendix A:
The Testimony of the Evangelists
by Simon Greenleaf
Appendix B:
Seeking Truth on the Other Side of the Wall: Greenleaf’s Evangelists
Meet the Federal Rules, Naturalism and Judas
by Nancy J. Kippenhan
An excellent, timely work.
Buy the books
The Law Above the Law