The Calvinist InternationalHistorical studies in Western jurisprudence
“Natura abhorret a vacuo” Nature abhors a vacuum, and so every people constituted as a political body is going to have a schedule of sacred observances, of holy days–days marked out as special in some way, whether because of their perceived relation to a polity’s foundation or to its preservation. This calendar never has been, […]
It is well known that the Apostle Paul appeals to his Roman citizenship to notify the Roman military tribune in Acts 22 that he should not be flogged. He later, in Acts 25, appeals to Caesar in order to gain a just hearing with respect to the charges leveled against by the “chief priests and […]
On our About page, one will see a painting of the Heidelberg Tun, a giant wine casket which was the wonder of that capitol of irenic Calvinism. There is a charming panegyric of the Tun by a presently obscure Reformed minister, poet, and scholar, one Anton Praetorius. The poem celebrates the Tun as proof of the superiority […]
Equity makes its appearance in theological and confessional treatments, as a way of understanding the place of Old Testament law in the New Testament era. It is invoked e.g. in the Westminster Confession of Faith as such an interpretive principle. A good treatment of the theological usage of equity can be consulted here, but, there […]
Justinian’s political theology is sometimes referred to as “dyarchy,” in which there are, or seem to be, two powers (on this ambiguity see below) ordained by God in human life, the the priestly and the imperial, sacerdotium et imperium (one cannot say the “sacred” and the “profane” for reasons which will become clear in what follows). […]
In the introduction to Niall Rudd’s Oxford World’s Classics translation of what survives of Cicero’s Republic and Laws, Jonathan Powell and Niall Rudd include a section on natural law, which for Cicero stands above all civil and positive law. There they note that Cicero’s view of natural law rests on other commitments, “certain fundamental beliefs” (xxvii). They […]
In Book 2 of De legibus (“On the Laws”), Cicero gives an account of law’s foundation in divine reason, and discourses on the relation between civil law and divine law, which is the standard for determining the justness of the former (all the passages quoted here the author Cicero puts in his own mouth within […]
The next element of definition in titulus I of Justinian’s Institutes is iuris prudentia. Iuris prudentia est divinarum atque humanarum rerum notitia, justi atque iniusti scientia. “Discretion in the application of justice [or good sense in the discernment of what is just] is an awareness of [acquaintance with/knowledge of] divine and human matters, the knowledge […]
Though I said before that I intended to start in the Corpus Iuris Civilis series with the Digest before moving on to the Institutes, the composition of which was directed by the jurist, master of offices (magister officiorum), and minister of justice (quaestor) Tribonian (about whom I hope to have more to say later), I’ve changed […]
In the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, written possibly near the end of the 6th century BC, there is contained one of the earliest pieces of evidence for a principle of due process in Greek thought. Early in the hymn, the infant Hermes steals 50 of Apollo’s cattle and will not admit what he’s done. Apollo […]