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This book explores for the first time the broad range of ways in which Christian thought intersects with American legal theory. Eminent legal scholars—including Stephen Carter, Thomas Shaffer, Elizabeth Mensch, Gerard Bradley, and Marci Hamilton—describe how various Christian traditions, including the Catholic, Calvinist, Anabaptist, and Lutheran traditions, understand law and justice, society and the state, and human nature and human striving. The book reveals not only the diversity among Christian legal thinkers but also the richness of the Christian tradition as a source for intellectual and ethical approaches to legal inquiry. The contributors bring various perspectives to the subject. Some engage the prominent schools of legal thought: liberalism, legal realism, critical legal studies, feminism, critical race theory, and law and economics. Others address substantive areas, including environmental, criminal, contract, torts, and family law, as well as professional responsibility. Together the essays introduce a new school of legal thought that will make a signal contribution to contemporary discussions of law.

This book compares historical and modern natural law ideas across global Christian traditions and explores their use in church law.

In this collection of essays, renowned philosopher Robert Sokolowski illustrates how Christian faith is not an alternative to reason, but rather an enhancement of it.

What impact has Christianity had on the law from its beginnings to the present day? This introduction explores the main legal teachings of Western Christianity, set out in the texts and traditions of scripture and theology, philosophy and jurisprudence. It takes up the weightier matters of the law that Christianity has profoundly shaped - justice and mercy, rule and equity, discipline and love - as well as more technical topics of canon law, natural law, and state law. Some of these legal creations were wholly original to Christianity. Others were converted from Jewish and classical traditions. Still others were reformed by Renaissance humanists and Enlightenment philosophers. But whether original or reformed, these Christian teachings on law, politics and society have made and can continue to make fundamental contributions to modern law in the West and beyond.

This book examines how Christian love can inform legal thought. The work introduces love as a way to advance the emergent conversation between constructive theology and jurisprudence that will also inform conversations in philosophy and political theory. Love is the central category for Christian ethical understanding. Yet, the growing field of law and religion, and relatedly law and theology, rarely addresses how love can shape our understanding of law. This reflects, in part, a common assumption that law and love stand in necessary tension. Love applies to the private and the personal. Law, by contrast, applies to the public and the political, realms governed by power. It is thus a mistake to envisage love as having anything but a negative relationship to law. This conclusion continues to govern Christian understandings of the meaning and vocation of law. The animating idea of this volume is that the concept of love can and should inform Christian legal thought. The project approaches this task from the perspective of both historical and constructive theology. Various contributions examine how such thinkers as Augustine, Aquinas, and Calvin utilised love in their legal thought. These essays highlight often neglected aspects of the Christian tradition. Other contributions examine Christian love in light of contemporary legal topics including civility, forgiveness, and secularism. Love, the book proposes, not only matters for law but can transform the terms on which Christians understand and engage it. The book will be of interest to academics and researchers working in the areas of legal theory; law and religion; law and philosophy; legal history; theology and religious studies; and political theory.