Full Description
In recent years, a distinctive approach to law and religion scholarship has developed in Australia, characterised by direct engagement with theology in addressing legal and jurisprudential questions. This collection consolidates and develops this approach under the label of the 'Australian School' of law and religion. The volume brings together leading experts to reflect upon the intersections between jurisprudence and theology and explore jurisprudential and legal questions from various theological standpoints. It presents a contribution to the continual reassessment of the nature and origins of shared norms through the convergent spaces between law and theology, prompting a deeper understanding of the foundations of our common humanity. It also models a way of doing law and religion scholarship that diverges from the dominant focus on the sociological interactions between law and religion in the context of cultural diversity and secular governance. The consistent theme of the collection is that jurisprudence and theology are inextricably intertwined, despite the traditional disciplinary divide between the two literatures. The book addresses both horizontal and vertical perspectives on this issue—horizontal, in the sense of engaging in comparative studies of diverse legal and religious paradigms, and vertical, in the sense of exploring the relationship between legal norms and transcendent sources of value. The book will be of interest to academics and researchers working in the areas of Law and Religion, Jurisprudence, Political Theory, Comparative Law, the History of Ideas and Theology.
Contents
1.Jurisprudence and Theology: The Australian School, Jonathan Crowe, Constance Youngwon Lee and Joshua Neoh; Part I: Natural Law and Theology; 2. The Obligation to Obey in Natural Law Theories and Legal Positivism, Anna Taitslin; 3. Why Church Government Needs a Doctrine of Natural Law, Benjamin B Saunders; 4. Eternal, Natural, Human, Divine: A Theological Perspective on the Types of Law, Jonathan Crowe; Part II: Constitutionalism and Theology; 5. Christian Inspirations and Constitutional Insights, Patrick A Keane AC KC; 6.The "Invincible Bulwark" of Constitutions, Renato Costa; 7. Coercion or Persuasion? The Insights of John Locke, St Augustine and Joseph Smith, A Keith Thompson; 8. Prudentia in Post-Conflict Legal Reconstruction, Justin McGovern, Joseph Suttie and Madeleine Suttie; Part III: Old Views, New Viewpoints; 9. Law as a Leap of Faith: Response to Gardner, Joshua Neoh and Jonathan Tjandra; 10. Lawyers in The Lawes: English Jurists and Richard Hooker's Theology, Reid Mortensen; 11.On the Theological Grounds of a Philosophical Jurisprudence: The Simplicity of God and the Nature of Law, Nicholas Aroney; Part IV: Comparative Perspectives; 12. From Sage to Statesman: A Comparative Analysis of the 'Conscionable Person' from Confucian and Calvinian Perspectives, Constance Youngwon Lee; 13.To God or Not to God: The Implications of God's (Non-)Existence in the Jurisprudences of Early Buddhism and Thomas Aquinas, Oscar H Kawamata; 14.Connecting the Western Legal Tradition to Christianity: Could Legal Culture be the Missing Link?, Benny Tabalujan; Part V: Future Directions; 15.Challenging the Unreal: The Future of Australian Law and Religion, Joel Harrison and Lukas Opacic.
