It is, and it isn't. There is no easy way to explain the dividing line, in part because one's faith does inform how one approaches the law. But I think holding firm to Constitutional principles and legal restraint can be expressed without reference to faith.
The underlying behavior, however, needs faith, morality, "something more." Society needs something more than law in order to obtain stability. Law provides dispute resolution structure and criminal remedy; but it cannot create morality of its own force. The law best serves an otherwise moral people. Law cannot create morality, and it is barely able to enforce it.
If you have time, read Blackstone - OF THE NATURE OF LAWS IN GENERAL.
Impossible. Even Blackstone admitted that people are only going to be bound to truth if they have fear and respect for a Supreme Being.
The underlying behavior, however, needs faith, morality, "something more." Society needs something more than law in order to obtain stability. Law provides dispute resolution structure and criminal remedy; but it cannot create morality of its own force. The law best serves an otherwise moral people. Law cannot create morality, and it is barely able to enforce it.
Ok I read it. First off, that was outstanding!
Second, Blackstone and Rope are in perfect agreement.
I love this one:
This law of nature, being coeval with mankind and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other-It is binding over all the globe in all countries, and at all times; no human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this: and such of them as are valid derive all their force, and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this original.
And this one:
Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws; that is to say, no human laws should be suffered to contradict these. There are, it is true a great number of indifferent points, in which both the divine law and the natural leave a man at his own liberty; but which are found necessary for the benefit of society to be restrained within certain limits. And herein it is that human laws have their greatest force and efficacy; for, with regard to such points as are not indifferent, human laws are only declaratory of, and act in subordination to, the former. To instance in the case of murder; this is expressly forbidden by the divine, and demonstrably by the natural law; and from these prohibitions arises the true unlawfulness of this crime. Those human laws that annex a punishment to it, do not at all increase its moral guilt, or superadd any fresh obligation in foro conscientiae to abstain from it's perpetration. Nay, if any human law should allow or enjoin us to commit it, we are bound to transgress that human law, or else we must offend both the natural and the divine. But with regard to matters that are in themselves indifferent, and are not commanded or forbidden by those superior laws; such, for instance, as exporting of wool into foreign countries; here the inferior legislature has scope and opportunity to interpose, and to make that action unlawful which before was not so.
BTW
Blackstone's
law of nature = 10 commandments
I like it.