RT Article
T1 Religious Foundations of Law in the West: An Historical Perspective
JF Journal of law and religion
VO 1
IS 1
SP 3
OP 43
A1 Berman, Harold Joseph 1918-2007
LA English
PB Cambridge Univ. Press
YR 1983
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1826480463
AB The fundamental changes that have taken place in our legal institutions during the past two generations are part of a transformation of the entire Western legal tradition, marked particularly by its disconnection from the religious foundations upon which it was built. For over eight hundred years, from the late eleventh to the early twentieth century, law in the West was supported by, and in many respects based on, religious beliefs, both Roman Catholic and Protestant. In the twentieth century the intimate connection between the Western legal tradition and the Western religious tradition has been substantially broken.Sixty to seventy years ago, the connection between law and religion in the West was so intimate that it was usually taken for granted. Even in the United States, where religious diversity was far greater than in most other Western countries, and where agnosticism and atheism were more tolerated, it was generally accepted that the legal system was rooted in Judaic and Christian religious and ethical beliefs. "We are a religious people," wrote Justice William O. Douglas as recently as 1951, speaking for a majority of the United States Supreme Court, "whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being." Not only law and legality in general, but many specific legal standards, principles and rules were widely thought to be derived ultimately from the Bible, from the history of the church, and from what the Declaration of Independence called "the laws of Nature and Nature's God."
DO 10.2307/1051071