by Law, Religion, and Ethics? The title of this blog might seem a bit grandiose, and it also hints at subversion– at an attempt to undo centuries of effort designed to keep separate subjects that this blog evidently proposes to bring together.
A major jurisprudential effort of the last couple of centuries, often described as “positivist,” has sought to separate law from morality. That’s a simplification, of course. Legal positivists have typically not wanted to insulate law from moral evaluation, and some have argued that the very separation of law from morality can itself serve a larger “rule of law” and essentially moral purpose. (As it happens, I’m sympathetic to that argument.) But legal positivists have typically insisted that a law’s validity and, usually, its meaning are not dependent on morality. And they have often argued, as in the famous Hart-Devlin debate, that some kinds of morality are “not the business” of the law.
An even older view (arguably going back to Plato’s Euthyphro) has tried to make morality and ethics independent of religion. Mixing ethics and religion, in this way of thinking, is most conducive to confusion– and, often, intolerance.
Contributors to a blog called Law, Religion, and Ethics presumably reject or at least wonder about these separations. Given my own skepticism about some of the prevailing boundary lines, I’m delighted to participate in this project of exploration and, perhaps, subversion.
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