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Fallen Justice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Sean Coyle
Sean Coyle*
Affiliation:
School of Law, University of Exeter, EX4 4RJ
*
s.coyle@exeter.ac.uk
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Type
Original Articles
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 93 , Issue 1048 , November 2012 , pp. 687 - 709
Copyright
© 2011 The Author. New Blackfriars © 2011 The Dominican Council. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2011, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK, and 350 Main Street, Malden MA 02148, USA

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References

1 Augustine, Epistle 91, 4.

2 Augustine, De Civitate Dei, XIX, 13.

3 Id, XIX, 17.

4 Id, XIX, 24.

5 Id, XIX, 8.

6 Augustine, De Libero Arbitrio, I.

7 Augustine, (above n 2), II, 22. See also XIX, 21 & 24.

8 Id, II, 22.

9 See Perreau-Saussine, Emile, ‘Paradise as a Political Theme in Augustine's City of God’, in Bockmuehl, M. & Stroumsa, G. eds. Paradise in Antiquity: Jewish and Christian Views (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

10 See Deane, H., The Political and Social Ideas of St Augustine, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), p. 78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Burnell, P.J., ‘The Status of Politics in Augustine's City of God’, History of Political Thought 13 (1992), pp. 13–29Google Scholar.

11 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II 94.2.

12 Id, I-II 93.3.

13 Id, I-II 95.2.

14 Id, I-II 94.5.

15 See Fortin, Ernest, Classical Christianity and the Political Order: The Collected Works of Ernest Fortin, vol 2 (Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), p. 211Google Scholar.

16 See e.g. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, II, 21.

17 Id, XIV, 13.

18 Id, I, 35. See also XVIII, 34.

19 Augustine, Of the Morals of the Catholic Church, I.15: ‘justice is love serving God only, and therefore ruling well all else, as subject to man…’; I.26: ‘… we can think of no surer step towards the love of God than the love of man to man’.

20 Id, I.25. See also Plato, Republic IV.

21 De Civitate Dei, XIX, 5.

22 Id, IV, 4.

23 Id, XV, 1 (Augustine states that he is speaking of the two cities ‘allegorically’.)

24 See Ivry, A.L., ‘Averroes's Middle and Long Commentaries on the De Anima’, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 5 (1995) pp. 75–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Hobbes, Leviathan, ch 13.

26 Id.

27 See, for example, Rawls's discussion of the ‘original position’: A Theory of Justice (Harvard: Belknap Press, 1971), ch 1Google Scholar.

28 Augustine does not respond directly to this question, but his reply can be distilled from De Civitate Dei, XIX, 17–22. See also Markus, R.A., Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), xix-xxGoogle Scholar.

29 Machiavelli, The Prince, chapter XV.

30 De Civitate Dei, XIX, 21; citing Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 5.5.2.

31 Augustine, De Civitate Dei, XIX, 14–15. See also Reynolds, Philip, To Have and to Hold: Marriage and its Documentation in Western Christendom 400–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 De Civitate Dei, XIX, 21.

33 Id, XIX, 5.

34 Id: ‘Without injustice, the republic would neither increase nor subsist. The imperial city … could not rule without recourse to injustice. For it is unjust for some men to rule over others.’

35 Id, XIX, 4–5 & XV, 6.

36 Augustine, De Sermone Domini in Monte 1.16.46.

37 De Civitate Dei, XIX, 14.

38 Id, XIX, 6.

39 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II 95.2.

40 See Rawls, (above n 27), 441. We might also see a similar pattern in the method of ‘reflective equilibrium’: the oscillation between general norms and scattered particulars (or eternity and temporality).

41 See Niebuhr, Reinhold, Love and Justice: Selections from the Shorter Writings (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1957), p. 14Google Scholar.

42 De Civitate Dei, XIX, 27.

43 For the argument that law is necessarily both reflective and constitutive of social order, see my ‘Positivism, Idealism and the Rule of Law’, 26 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies (2006), 257–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 See Dworkin, R., Law's Empire (London: Fontana, 1986) ch 10Google Scholar; Fuller, Lon, The Law in Quest of Itself (Chicago: Foundation Press, 1940), p. 140Google Scholar.

45 Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's Politics, I.1.22.

46 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II 90.3, glossing 2 Romans 14–15: ‘When the Gentiles, who have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts…’ See also I-II 63.2 & 65.2.

47 Ibid, II 57.1.

48 Ibid, I-II 94.6.

49 Ibid, I-II 91.2.

50 Ibid, I-II 94.6.

51 See Porter, Jean, Natural and Divine Law (Ontario: Novalis, 1999), p. 165Google Scholar.

52 See Niebuhr, (above n 41), 48, and MacIntyre, Alasdair, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (London: Duckworth, 1988), ch 1Google Scholar.

53 See e.g. Fukuyama, Francis, The End of History and the Last Man (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993)Google Scholar.

54 Dworkin, , Justice in Robes (Cambridge MA: Belknap Press, 2006), pp. 138–39Google Scholar.

55 See John Gray, , Enlightenment's Wake (London: Routledge, 1995)Google Scholar. Perhaps the most pernicious feature of the images of ‘personal freedom’ (autonomy) imparted by the liberal tradition is its tendency to require that such freedom be imposed upon societies and cultures which lack it. Such freedoms, in being implacably hostile to the forms of tradition (especially foreign tradition), become blind to the extent to which they are themselves embedded in traditional forms to which they give expression.

56 See Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II 100–104, & Fortin, (above n 15), 210–15.

57 Id, I-II 91.3.

58 Id.

59 Id, I-II 91.4, glossing Ecclesiasticus 15:14: ‘God left man in the hand of his own counsel.’

60 Id, I-II 94.5.

61 Id, I-II 94.4.

62 Finnis, , Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), p. 198Google Scholar.

63 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II 58.1.

64 Finnis, , Aquinas: Moral, Political and Legal Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 136Google Scholar. See Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II 122.6.

65 See Annabel Brett, , Liberty, Right and Nature: Individual Rights in Later Scholastic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 92Google Scholar.

66 Finnis's arguments form part of a long-standing controversy over the presence of natural rights in Thomistic thought. One exchange on the subject can be found in a Symposium in Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy 20 (1997) pp. 627–731, and another in Review of Politics 64 (2002) pp. 389–420. I do not intend to digress too deeply into this debate in the present context.

67 Finnis, (above n 64), 135.

68 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II 94.4.

69 Id, I-II 95.2.

70 Id, I-II 94.5.

71 Id, I-II 95.2.

72 Fortin (above n 15), pp. 271–72.

73 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II 95.2.

74 Porter (above n 51), p. 177.

75 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II 113.1.

76 Id, I-II 96.4.

77 Id.

78 Markus (above n 28), p. xiii.

79 See Geuss, Raymond, Outside Ethics (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), pp. 34–35Google Scholar.

80 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II 96.1 & 95.4.

81 Id, I-II 96.4.

82 Id, I 103.3.

83 Id, I-II 105.1.

84 Id, II-II 47.10. It is, as it were, the proper good of an individual (if he is indeed a social animal), as distinct from his private good.

85 See e.g. Grotius, De Iure Belli ac Pacis, I.4.7.

86 For an extremely informative discussion of some of these themes, see Perreau-Saussine, E., ‘What Remains of Socialism’ in Riordan, P. ed. Values in Public Life: Aspects of Common Goods (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2007), pp. 11–34Google Scholar.

87 MacIntyre, Alasdair, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (London: Duckworth, 1988), p. 334Google Scholar.

88 Id, 334–35.

89 Hampshire, Stuart, Innocence and Experience (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 61Google Scholar.

90 Id, 52.

91 Id, 61 & 63.

92 Id, 53.

93 MacIntyre (above n 87), p. 327.

94 See e.g. Hart, H.L.A., The Concept of Law 2 ed (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994)Google Scholar, ch IX; Hobbes, Leviathan (various eds), ch 13.

95 See Finnis (above n 62), ch 4.

96 This corresponds roughly to Rawls's position: see Justice as Fairness: A Re-statement (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. 8–24Google Scholar. See also Nicholas Sagovsky, Christian Tradition and the Practice of Justice (London: SPCK, 2008), ch 8, and Plant, Raymond, Modern Political Thought (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), p. 86Google Scholar.

97 Oliver O’Donovan, , Common Objects of Love (Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans, 2002), p. 23Google Scholar. For an exploration of the liberal bases of Finnis's argument, see Fortin (above n 15), pp. 271–76.

98 Rawls, , The Law of Peoples (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 126Google Scholar.

99 Amartya Sen, , The Idea of Justice (London: Penguin Books, 2010), p. viiGoogle Scholar.

100 We might of course take comfort from the realization that neither are our practices perfect expressions of injustice.

101 I have in mind particularly Dworkin, Rawls and others who, in representing the common law as a body of abstract principles, seem to me to misunderstand fundamentally the nature of common law adjudication.