Legal Consciousness in the Postliberal Movement
A legislator with a healthy legal consciousness must integrate the meaning of the laws they enact into the depths of the Christian legal tradition and the tradition of America.
Reinhardt Fang is an undergraduate student at Villanova University.
We are living in an era of legal instability and eroding foundations, with decadence and destructive revolutions hovering over Washington and threatening American culture as a whole. Undoubtedly, the United States and the entire Western world is undergoing a “legal consciousness” crisis, or how we perceive the law.
While not unprecedented in human history, the current situation is reminiscent of ancient civilizations' collapse. Let us take a moment to review the decline of the Byzantine Empire: crises started with a slow breakdown of the faith, which then gradually spread to the legal consciousness of the whole Byzantine society and a breakdown of the law.
Subsequently, Byzantium entered a long period of turmoil and civil war, greatly damaging its spiritual and national foundations, leading to invasion by the Ottomans who found an empire weakened by internal strife and lacking resistance, A legal consciousness devoid of religious roots proved unsustainable to defend Byzantine.
It is not possible delve into the detailed process of cultural secularization in the modern Western world under the influence of liberalism for centuries under this format. Yet, the weakening influence of the Catholic Church, intellectuals advocating for the "liberation" of culture from clerical guidance. Undoubtedly, people no longer feel the sacredness of themselves and the world.
Legal consciousness is similarly affected, evolving towards a more secular nature under the influence of liberalism, with Christian spirit and meaning increasingly departing from legal and political life. Legal consciousness gradually forgets its sacred Christian foundation and succumbs to skepticism ("everything is subject to doubt"), relativism ("everything is dialectical in relative terms"), and nihilism (an attitude unwilling to believe in anything).
As emphasized by Pope Benedict XVI, if a public life that falls into the dictatorship of relativism forgets how to consider the moral ethics of good and evil as everything becomes "dialectical and relative," it will become indifferent and ruthless. Is this not precisely the gradually decaying reality of liberal society in America today?
To overcome this crisis, the postliberal movement needs to strive to revive a healthy legal consciousness in the ruins of liberalism.
A legislator with a healthy legal consciousness must integrate the meaning of the laws they enact into the depths of the Christian legal tradition and the tradition of America. In other words, they must connect the discovered meaning and purpose of the laws they hold with the teachings of Christianity, corresponding to what we have in moral theology — conscience.
Each of us has a basic conscience, but as emphasized by St. Thomas Aquinas, many people's consciences are ignored and distorted to the point of leading them astray. Even when engaging in actions like abortion, a weak and sinful "conscience" may still exist, albeit with its spiritual and moral structure proven to be distorted.
It can be said that it is necessary for every law to awaken the conscience that lies dormant within people’s heart. This is because deep within human will, there exists a certain pure justice and fairness, as St. Gregory of Nazianzus described as the "logos from God innate to all people."
This can also be referred to as natural legal consciousness, which is more or less inherent in everyone like a conscience. Therefore, legislative bodies and courts under the postliberalism movement need to consider the relationship between legal provisions and natural legal consciousness when drafting, amending, and interpreting laws, showing people what they signify and how best to apply them to the Christian way of life.
That is to say, natural legal consciousness does not immediately provide ready-made laws or judicial precedents. However, it shows people a direction towards redemption, and people's thoughts and will should move in this direction. Therefore, law is not just a conditional formula invented and established by people; its meaning is not determined by one's stipulation. It should be a spiritual value bestowed by the Holy Church's dogma.
Let every law or authority, judgment or prohibition, legal custom or obligation be illuminated and ennobled by the radiance of the legal consciousness that come from natural law and the Christian-educated. We must respect and be formed by the law. We need rulers who can participate in this activity. Only in this way can one's attitude towards the law possess true, profound creativity.
For the postliberal movement, only when people can rediscover natural legal consciousness, rooted in reality, in reality will the revival of the American political system begin. This is taking place right now, so there is much reason for hope. This is not just a matter of institutions; it is a matter of law and the souls of the American people.
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Good piece. One of the moral challenges I give my HS philosophy students is: "Is it illegal to beat up an old lady and steal her purse because it's wrong? Or is it wrong because it's illegal?" It's obviously a trick question, since the latter is pretty much nonsensical, but when they answer the former, my next question is, "why is it wrong?"
Boy is there squirming. It's amazing how reluctant even my nominally Christian students are applying their Christian moral code to the origin of law. My students are almost all fundamentalist Protestants, so their families lack the background of Aquinas. (They see the problem, but lack the tools to solve it.) Most need to be guided to an individual derivation of the basics of natural and divine law before they can see human law as a reflection of that.
Augustine tells a story in City of God about a pirate supposedly talking to Alexander the Great (paraphrasing): “Who are you to seize the whole Earth? I do it with a petty ship and am called a robber. You do it with a great fleet and are called an emperor.'" Unless law is an extension of a moral order, it is simply an exercise in power and rapidly devolves into tyranny. (Which is why the pirate is wrong.)
I sure wish I understood this as well as you do when I was your age.