Cavedon on Early Stirrings of Modern Liberty in the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas @EmoryLaw @LawandReligion

Matthew Cavedon, Emory University, Center for the Study of Law and Religion, has published Early Stirrings of Modern Liberty in the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. The CSLR Research Paper No. is forthcoming. Here is the abstract.

In a 2021 contribution to Politics and Religion, Jesse Russell writes that St. Thomas Aquinas “had a decidedly illiberal view of a government.” He says that Aquinas “advocates a government in which the people are not given public liberty” and endorses skepticism toward the view that Aquinas “prepare[d] the way for the mixed monarchy of the English constitution.” But Aquinas identified consent as the foundation of political society, approved of democratic selection of public authorities, deemed “the best” type of government to feature popular representation, and warned that “a scheme should be carefully worked out which would prevent” the rise of tyranny. He was no proto-reactionary. The great modern rapprochement between Thomism and liberal democracy was borne of ideas that stirred in Aquinas’s own writings eight centuries ago.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Reid on Thomas Aquinas on Tyrannicide

Charles J. Reid, University of St. Thomas School of Law (Minnesota), has published Thomas Aquinas on Tyrannicide as U of St. Thomas (Minnesota) Legal Studies Research Paper No. 20-21. Here is the abstract.

With this Article, I have completed a trilogy of studies on the jurisprudence of Thomas Aquinas. In “Thomas Aquinas: Definitions and Vocabulary in His Treatise on Law,” I conducted a careful examination of Thomas’ juristic language to conclude that Aquinas viewed law rather as a senior administrator might. In “Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274),” I reviewed the main lines of Aquinas’ constitutional thought. In this Article, I focus intensely on a narrow but compelling theme: Thomas’ thought on the legitimacy of tyrannicide. I conclude that Thomas justifies tyrannicide while trying at the same time to preserve good order. The touchstone of his analysis throughout is the common good. If the ruler breaks faith the common good, the ruler has thereby committed sedition and appropriate action might be taken by private citizens and public authorities.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Rodriguez-Blanco, Law and Authority Under the Guise of the Good (Hart) Now Available in Paperback

Veronica Rodriguez-Blanco's book Law and Authority Under the Guise of the Good (Hart Publishing, 2016) is now also available in paperback. Here is a description of the contents from the publisher's website.

The received view on the nature of legal authority contains the idea that a sound account of legitimate authority will explain how a legal authority has a right to command and the addressee a duty to obey. The received view fails to explain, however, how legal authority truly operates upon human beings as rational creatures with specific psychological makeups. This book takes a bottom-up approach, beginning at the microscopic level of agency and practical reason and leading to the justificatory framework of authority. The book argues that an understanding of the nature of legal normativity involves an understanding of the nature and structure of practical reason in the context of the law, and advances the idea that legal authority and normativity are intertwined. This point can be summarised thus: if we are able to understand both how the agent exercises his or her practical reason under legal directives and commands and how the agent engages his or her practical reason by following legal rules grounded on reasons for actions as good-making characteristics, then we can fully grasp the nature of legal authority and legal normativity. Using the philosophies of action enshrined in the works of Elisabeth Anscombe, Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, the study explains practical reason as diachronic future-directed intention in action and argues that this conception illuminates the structure of practical reason of the legal rules' addressees. The account is comprehensive and enables us to distinguish authoritative and normative legal rules in just and good legal systems from 'apparent' authoritative and normative legal rules of evil legal systems. At the heart of the book is the methodological view of a 'practical turn' to elucidate the nature of legal normativity and authority.