Abstract
Jurisprudence strives to bring order to the chaos of human behavior that arises whenever two or more persons live or work within proximity—an abstract system imposed over groups, nations, and other sociological systems to the point where it is also considered sociological. Actually, jurisprudence encompasses two distinct abstract systems: ethics and law. Ethical systems address human conduct but rely only on moral suasion or peer pressure. Reliance on moral suasion usually leads to anarchy; hence, legal systems codify portions of ethical perspectives, which can be enforced by executives. Over this, we find theological systems insofar as theology prescribes ethical behavior, and, in times past, justified temporal law exercised by religious figures. No king ever matched earlier papal authority.
The precepts of the law are these: To live honorably, to injure no other man, to render every man his due.
—Institutes of Justinian
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Notes
James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, Inc., 1970), p. 601.
The advocacy of civil disobedience traces back to Cicero, St. Aquinas, and John Locke. Thoreau’s advocacy implied using it as a form of controlled revolution. Yet in almost all cases, the common theme of these writers is obedience to a superhuman moral law.
For an interesting comparison, see David B. McCall, “Profit: spur for solving social ills,” Harvard Business Review, May-June 1973, pp. 46–54, 180, and Kenneth R. Andrews, “Can the best corporations be made moral?” in the same issue, pp. 57–64.
Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee,Inherit the Wind (New York: Random House, 1955), p. 82.
Edward Tenner, Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966), pp. 26–46, 71–94, 161–183.
The author developed this spectrum in Age of Automation: Technical Genius, Social Dilemma (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 1995), pp. 118–121.
An earlier set was Augustus Hopkins Strong, Systematic Theology (1886), in three volumes (and which is still used in some seminaries).
Will and Ariel Durant,The Age of Voltaire (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1965), pp. 787–798.
The Encyclopedia of Evolution p. 399.
“Senate in Tennessee backs ‘10 Commandments’ posting,” The New York Times, February 23, 1996, p. A12 (and “Evolution measure killed,” March 29, 1996, p. A9).
E. N. Da C. Andrade, “Isaac Newton” in The World of Mathematics, vol. 1, p. 274. The Archbishop at the time was the Rt. Rev. Thomas Tenison.
Schenck v. US. 249 U.S. 47 (1919). Holmes wrote: “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.” The case involved the right of the government to curtail free speech in time of “clear and present danger,” i. e., the U.S. role in World War I.
With reference to Holmes’s The Common Law, see Baker, pp. 246–270.
Edward W. Knappman, ed., Great American Trials (Boston: New England Publishers Association, 1994). This summarizes 200 cases, dating back to colonial times.
The deciding case was that of Dr. John Webster in 1850. Webster, a professor at Harvard, was found guilty of murder based solely on circumstantial but conclusive evidence. He was subsequently hung (Great American Trials, pp. 105–108).
The Encyclopedia of Evolution p. 399.
The camp was not benign. Of 140,000 persons sent to Theresien-stadt, 88,000 were later shipped to extermination camps and 33,000 perished of malnutrition and disease. Of the 19,000 who survived, most had arrived within the last year of the war. Israel Gretman, ed., Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, vol. 4 (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1990), p. 1463.
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, Great Books of the Western World, vol. 51, p. 680.
“The other Schindlers,”U.S. News & World Report, March 21,1994, pp. 56–64.
Max Lerner, ed., The Mind and Faith of Justice Holmes (New York: Modern Library, 1943), p. 39.
Carl G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self, trans, by R.F.C. Hull (New York: New American Library, 1957), p. 73.
Churchill in Memoriam, ed. The New York Times staff (New York: Bantam, 1965), p. 159.
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© 1997 George M. Hall
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Hall, G.M. (1997). Ethics, Theology, and Jurisprudence. In: The Ingenious Mind of Nature. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-6020-7_19
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