This brief article shows that pair-bonding strategies of reproduction are best suited to human nature and lie at the foundation of the Western tradition’s preference for monogamy over polygamy.

Martin Luther and his colleagues transformed the theology and law of marriage and family life in sixteenth-century Germany and Scandinavia. They replaced the medieval Catholic views of marriage as a sacrament and celibacy as a superior institution, with a new view of marriage as a natural and necessary institution for all fit adults, clergy and…[Read more]

The late Harold Berman was a pioneering scholar of Soviet law, legal history, jurisprudence, and law and religion; he is best known today for his monumental Law and Revolution series on the Western legal tradition. In the early 1960s, Berman wrote a short book, Law and Language, which was only recently discovered and published in 2013. In this…[Read more]

This text reflects briefly on the precocious rise of Christian legal studies in North American and European law schools, and the past, present, and potential role of the Bible and the Christian tradition in shaping modern understandings of public, private, penal, and procedural law.

In many areas of law and society, religion and law exercise “overlapping jurisdictions.” Often such overlapping claims concern institutions that have both religious and political dimensions, such as education and schooling; charity and social welfare; and marriage and family life. It is the third of these mixed institutions – marriage and the f…[Read more]

Martin Luther’s signature “two kingdoms” teaching of the sixteenth century was an early and innovative theory of secularization that lies at the heart of historical Scandinavian culture. Defying the organic medieval models of Western Christendom, Luther separated the heavenly and earthly kingdoms, the saint and the sinner, faith and reason, churc…[Read more]

This article analyzes the shifting concepts of law in Western law and thought in early modern times and today. It first shows how the modern movement of interdisciplinary legal studies emerged as a corrective to the narrow positivist concepts of law that prevailed before the 1960s. It then shows how, in anticipation of modern methods, earlier…[Read more]

In this brief reflection on his mentor, John Witte describes Harold Berman’s theories of law and religion in the Western legal tradition, and the religious sources of his drive to produce a global integrative jurisprudence.

This Article argues that religion is an important source and dimension of modern human rights, and it surveys the historical and contemporary rights contributions of each of the major world religions – Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It then surveys the place of religion in modern international human rights n…[Read more]

Review of an interesting collection of comparative articles on the state of religious freedom in various Western countries, with critique of the church’s resistance to a bill of rights for Australia.

This Article analyzes the transformation of Western legal philosophy in the sixteenth-century Lutheran Reformation, with a focus on the legal thought of theologian Martin Luther, moral philosopher Philip Melanchthon, and legal theorist Johann Oldendorp. Starting with Luther’s two kingdoms theory, Melanchton developed an intricate theory of n…[Read more]

This Article analyzes the mainline Lutheran, Calvinist, and Anglican models of sex, marriage, and family and their gradual liberalization by Enlightenment liberalism. The theological differences between these models can be traced to their grounding in Lutheran two kingdoms doctrines, Calvinist covenantal theology, Anglican commonwealth theory, and…[Read more]

For the past half century, David Little has done path-breaking work in exploring the religious foundations and dimensions of human rights. While working on a wide interreligious canvas, he has focused in especially on some of the Calvinist foundations of human rights, notably in the work of John Calvin, John Locke, and Roger Williams. This chapter…[Read more]

This Article shows that many Enlightenment liberals defended traditional family values and warned against the dangers of sexual libertinism and marital breakdown. While they rejected many traditional teachings in their construction of modern liberalism, Enlightenment liberals held firmly to classical and Christian teachings that exclusive and…[Read more]

Pope Benedict XVI argued convincingly that Christianity and other religious communities not only laid the foundations for modern human rights, but remain essential allies in the struggle for human rights for all. Theories of human dignity without religious mooring, claims of rights without reciprocal moral duties, and public deliberation without…[Read more]

Questions about polygamy are likely to dominate Western family law in the next generation. Two generations ago, contraception, abortion, and women’s rights were the hot topics. This past generation, children’s rights and same-sex rights have dominated public deliberation and litigation. On the frontier of Western family law are hard questions abo…[Read more]

This Article responds to Lenn Goodman’s book, Religious Pluralism and Values in the Public Sphere (2014). Part I evaluates Goodman’s argument that John Rawls excludes “comprehensive” religious and moral arguments from public discourse. Part II analyzes Professor Goodman’s prediction that it will be practically difficult to enforce Rawlsian…[Read more]

This Article analyzes the historical sources and forms of human rights in Western legal and Christian traditions, and identifies key questions about the intersections of Christianity and human rights in modern contexts. The authors identify nine distinctions between different conceptions of rights correlating with four types of jural…[Read more]

This Article examines the influence of the Magna Carta on the development of rights and liberties in the Anglo-American common law tradition, especially in the seventeenth century. Originally issued by King John of England in 1215, the Magna Carta set forth numerous prototypical rights and liberties that helped to shape subsequent legal…[Read more]

This Essay assesses Samuel Moyn’s revisionist argument that human rights were born only in the mid-twentieth century and then mostly as a shrewd Christian response to the secular liberalism and communist materialism that endangered the Church’s political interests and influence. This account largely ignores the West’s enduring and evolving tradi…[Read more]