Does “The Law” Exist?
Legal Moderns Send the Law Packing
The title of this article will seem odd to most readers, for they will say that, of course, laws exist; we are surrounded by them; indeed, we cannot avoid them. As a practicing lawyer, I deal with laws all the time. They are made by persons acting in various official capacities, for example, by legislators or judges. They are sometimes referred to as the “positive law.” If I have forgotten the law that applies to a particular situation, I can look it up. I will find it written down somewhere in black and white, as a city ordinance, for example, or a state or federal regulation or statute, or in an individual case decided by a judge.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Thomas E. Lordan is an independent scholar and practicing lawyer (currently with Arizona Voice for Crime Victims) living in Phoenix with his wife, Kimberly. He holds undergraduate and law degrees from Notre Dame and an M.A. in Politics from Catholic University, where he is currently working on his Ph.D. He taught at Thomas More College and Benedictine University and has presented papers at each Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association since 2014.
subscription options
Order
Print/Online Subscription
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Order
Online Only
Subscription
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
33.1—January/February 2020
on the Consequences of One Birth Before Roe v. Wade by Craig Kellogg Galer
31.5—September/October 2018
on the Congregation as a Wilderness by Paul Gregory Alms
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
