“Dignity” has become an increasingly important legal value in recent decades. It has taken up a central position in the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence of substantive due process, where values including privacy and autonomy occupied the limelight in prior decades. Dignity has become, in these discussions, a right that the state can and/or must confer to particular individuals and groups for identitarian reasons. Dignity has a much longer and richer heritage in European legal systems as the source of rights in, for example, the European Convention on Human Rights and caselaw from the European Court of Human Rights.

The path of dignity in Anglophone legal philosophy is a complex one as well. Human dignity was not particularly emphasized by the great figures of legal positivism (Hart and Raz, for example, the latter of whom has focused primarily on autonomy). But recent studies by philosophers including Jeremy Waldron have also placed it in a more central position. Here is a new volume of essays concerning the place of dignity in the work of the eminent philosopher of law and political philosopher, Ronald Dworkin: Dignity in the Legal and Political Philosophy of Ronald Dworkin (OUP), edited by Salman Khurshid, Lokendra Malik, and Veronica Rodriguez-Blanco.

Well-known for his contribution to the juristic world, Professor Ronald Dworkin was an outstanding legal philosopher of his generation. This volume celebrates the thoughts of Ronald Dworkin on dignity. The contributors have critically engaged with different perspectives of Dworkin’s thoughts on dignity. The aim is to shed light on juridical and moral contemporary conundrums such as the role of dignity in constitutional contexts in India, and the understanding of dignity as either a foundation of human rights or as a supra value that illuminates other values and rights.

The volume is divided into four parts. The first part ‘Integrity, Values, Interpretation, and Objectivity’ focuses on Dworkin’s interpretive methodology and examines the way his value holism relies on his interpretative methodology. The second part ‘Dignity, Responsibility, and Free Will’ concentrates on elucidating the complex relationship between dignity, human will, and responsibility in Dworkin’s moral, legal, and political philosophy. In the third part ‘Freedom of Speech, Right to Privacy, and Rights’, the authors use Dworkin’s philosophical moral framework and the interpretative methodology to shed light on his own views on freedom of speech and the language of rights, including human rights. The fourth part ‘Dignity, Constitutions, and Legal Systems’ critically discusses Dworkin’s interpretative methodology to understand dignity in the context of constitutions, state, and law beyond the state. With contributions from eminent scholars across the world, the present volume will help in disseminating Dworkin’s rich jurisprudential thoughts.

It’s a special pleasure to note this new book of our friend, Steven D. Smith: Pagans and Christians in the City: Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac (Eerdmans), available this fall. I enjoyed reading a draft of this work very much. It focuses in the first half on some of the ways in which Christianity and Imperial Rome beginning in roughly the Antonine dynasty were fundamentally incompatible, leading to the persecution of Christians within the context of an otherwise ostensibly irenic “pax Romana.” But there is a great deal of interest in this book, including provocative and insightful comparisons between the situation of the Roman imperial period to our own contests between law and religion today. Congratulations, Steve!

Traditionalist Christians who oppose same-sex marriage and other cultural developments in the US wonder why they are being forced to bracket their beliefs in order to participate in public life. This situation is not new, says Steven D. Smith: Christians two thousand years ago in the Roman Empire faced similar challenges and questions.

Starting with T. S. Eliot’s claim that the future of the West would be determined by a contest between Christianity and “modern paganism,” Smith argues in Pagans and Christians in the City that today’s culture wars can be seen as a contemporary reprise of the basic antagonism that pitted pagans against Christians in the late Roman Empire. He looks at that historical conflict and explores how the same competing orientations continue to clash today. Readers on both sides of the culture wars, Smith shows, have much to learn from seeing how patterns from ancient history are reemerging in today’s most controversial issues.

When Magna Carta passed its 800th anniversary a few years ago, it was clear that its legacy was hotly contested by those who could be called the “celebrators” as against the “debunkers.” The celebrators note the importance of the document as the progenitor of the idea of limited government and the rule of law (including and especially in England and the United States), while the debunkers counter that Magna Carta’s image today is largely the product of nostalgic myth-making (see this op-ed piece, for example).

Here is the paperback edition (the more affordable edition!) of a book that sheds new light on the uses of Magna Carta in the 400 years following its creation: The Reinvention of Magna Carta: 1216-1616 (CUP) by Sir John Baker.

This new account of the influence of Magna Carta on the development of English public law is based largely on unpublished manuscripts. The story was discontinuous. Between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries the charter was practically a spent force. Late-medieval law lectures gave no hint of its later importance, and even in the 1550s a commentary on Magna Carta by William Fleetwood was still cast in the late-medieval mould. Constitutional issues rarely surfaced in the courts. But a new impetus was given to chapter 29 in 1581 by the ‘Puritan’ barrister Robert Snagge, and by the speeches and tracts of his colleagues, and by 1587 it was being exploited by lawyers in a variety of contexts. Edward Coke seized on the new learning at once. He made extensive claims for chapter 29 while at the bar, linking it with habeas corpus, and then as a judge (1606–16) he deployed it with effect in challenging encroachments on the common law. The book ends in 1616 with the lectures of Francis Ashley, summarising the new learning, and (a few weeks later) Coke’s dismissal for defending too vigorously the liberty of the subject under the common law.

Dante’s Purgatorio has always seemed to me to fly under the radar. Inferno draws most people’s attention, and Paradiso, while much less well known in its details, is generally understood to be the final objective of the work. But what is the point of purgatory, after all? Just a way station between the horrible beginning and the heavenly end?

But Purgatorio contains much of what is “political” in Dante’s thought. Purgatory is in some ways a Christian metaphor for this world. While Inferno houses the souls of those who have done unspeakable things, Purgatorio is the place for those with evil in their hearts, impure motives, sinful dispositions that still separate them from paradise. Each of the seven “terraces” concerns a different vice, with virtuous counterexamples. One of the most memorable scenes in the Terrace of Pride is the building of the Tower of Babel, a central metaphor for political pride throughout the ages from Dante to today (see, for example, the magnificent final essay by Michael Oakeshott in this volume).

Here is a new book that focuses on Dante’s political thought in the Purgatorio, with a special emphasis on the role of law: Dante’s Philosophical Life: Politics and Wisdom in “Purgatorio” (Pennsylvania Press) by Paul Stern.

When political theorists teach the history of political philosophy, they typically skip from the ancient Greeks and Cicero to Augustine in the fifth century and Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth, and then on to the origins of modernity with Machiavelli and beyond. Paul Stern aims to change this settled narrative and makes a powerful case for treating Dante Alighieri, arguably the greatest poet of medieval Christendom, as a political philosopher of the first rank.

In Dante’s Philosophical Life, Stern argues that Purgatorio’s depiction of the ascent to Earthly Paradise, that is, the summit of Mount Purgatory, was intended to give instruction on how to live the philosophic life, understood in its classical form as “love of wisdom.” As an object of love, however, wisdom must be sought by the human soul, rather than possessed. But before the search can be undertaken, the soul needs to consider from where it begins: its nature and its good. In Stern’s interpretation of Purgatorio, Dante’s intense concern for political life follows from this need, for it is law that supplies the notions of good that shape the soul’s understanding and it is law, especially its limits, that provides the most evident display of the soul’s enduring hopes.

According to Stern, Dante places inquiry regarding human nature and its good at the heart of philosophic investigation, thereby rehabilitating the highest form of reasoned judgment or prudence. Philosophy thus understood is neither a body of doctrines easily situated in a Christian framework nor a set of intellectual tools best used for predetermined theological ends, but a way of life. Stern’s claim that Dante was arguing for prudence against dogmatisms of every kind addresses a question of contemporary concern: whether reason can guide a life.

Is honor a Christian virtue? A republican virtue? Certainly some idea of “honor” was vital for the political and moral life of the early American republic, and whether this idea was properly described as of Christian or Enlightenment (or, as is even more likely, of much more ancient) origin is impossible to answer. Some scholars have argued that the constitutional oath (sworn by, for example, the President upon assuming office) reflects a commitment to the virtue of honor in both an official and a personal way. And some founders sometimes spoke of a possible conflict between Christian and republican virtues. For example, John Adams wrote that “it may be well questioned, whether love of the body politic is precisely moral or Christian virtue, which requires justice and benevolence to enemies as well as to friends, and to other nations as well as our own.” Adams, Defence of the Constitutions (1787).

Here is a new book examining the virtue of honor as a civic good. It will be interesting to see whether the author explores some of these issues. The book is Why Honor Matters (Basic Books) by philosopher Tamler Sommers.

To the modern mind, the idea of honor is outdated, sexist, and barbaric. It evokes Hamilton and Burr and pistols at dawn, not visions of a well-organized society. But for philosopher Tamler Sommers, a sense of honor is essential to living moral lives. In Why Honor Matters, Sommers argues that our collective rejection of honor has come at great cost. Reliant only on Enlightenment liberalism, the United States has become the home of the cowardly, the shameless, the selfish, and the alienated. Properly channeled, honor encourages virtues like courage, integrity, and solidarity, and gives a sense of living for something larger than oneself. Sommers shows how honor can help us address some of society’s most challenging problems, including education, policing, and mass incarceration. Counterintuitive and provocative, Why Honor Matters makes a convincing case for honor as a cornerstone of our modern society.

Wow! One for the wish list. A six-volume extravaganza on the history of evil, with units on antiquity, the medieval age (yes, that’s medieval evil), the early modern period, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the early twentieth century, and mid-twentieth century to today.

It seems that evil became more plentiful in the last 120 years, since two separate volumes of the series were required to document and discuss it. Or perhaps there is simply more to say about more temporally proximate evils. At any rate, this excellent looking new series, edited by Chad Meister and Charles Taliaferro, is published by Routledge. Below is the description of the volume about antiquity.

This first volume of The History of Evil covers Graeco-Roman, Indian, Near Eastern, and Eastern philosophy and religion from 2000 BCE to 450 CE. This book charts the foundations of the history of evil among the major philosophical traditions and world religions, beginning with the oldest recorded traditions: the Vedas and Upaniṣhads, Confucianism and Daoism, and Buddhism, and continuing through Graeco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian schools of thought. This cutting-edge treatment of the history of evil at its crucial and determinative inception will appeal to those with particular interests in the ancient period and early theories and ideas of evil and good, as well as those seeking an understanding of how later philosophical and religious developments were conditioned and shaped.

“In God We Trust.” The association of divinity with money has strong roots in the American church-state experience. This new work, Divine Currency: The Theological Power of Money in the West (Stanford UP), by Devin Singh, explores this and many other connections and associations between the economic and the religious.

This book shows how early economic ideas structured Christian thought and society, giving crucial insight into why money holds such power in the West. Examining the religious and theological sources of money’s power, it shows how early Christian thinkers borrowed ancient notions of money and economic exchange from the Roman Empire as a basis for their new theological arguments. Monetary metaphors and images, including the minting of coins and debt slavery, provided frameworks for theologians to explain what happens in salvation. God became an economic administrator, for instance, and Christ functioned as a currency to purchase humanity’s freedom. Such ideas, in turn, provided models for pastors and Christian emperors as they oversaw both resources and people, which led to new economic conceptions of state administration of populations and conferred a godly aura on the use of money. Divine Currency argues that this longstanding association of money with divine activity has contributed over the centuries to money’s ever increasing significance, justifying various forms of politics that manage citizens along the way. Devin Singh’s account sheds unexpected light on why we live in a world where nothing seems immune from the price mechanism.

When most people think of the Crusades, they have in mind the Third Crusade. The one involving Richard the Lionheart, Saladin, and the contest for Jerusalem (ultimately a failed exploit from the Christian side of things), and (less seriously) Sir Walter Scott, Robin Hood, the Merry Men, and so on. And so this new military history about one of the most famous battles of the Third Crusade, The Siege of Acre, 1189-1191: Saladin, Richard the Lionheart, and the Battle that Decided the Third Crusade (Yale UP), by John D. Hosler, looks to be a useful new source on this important conflict.

Here’s an interesting new book on a group of Christian intellectuals of the post-War period, grappling with the implications of the War for social life in its aftermath. The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis (OUP), by Alan Jacobs, also the author of this book on thinking and speaking to one another in an age of fracture.

By early 1943, it had become increasingly clear that the Allies would win the Second World War. Around the same time, it also became increasingly clear to many Christian intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic that the soon-to-be-victorious nations were not culturally or morally prepared for their success. A war won by technological superiority merely laid the groundwork for a post-war society governed by technocrats. These Christian intellectuals-Jacques Maritain, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, W. H. Auden, and Simone Weil, among others-sought both to articulate a sober and reflective critique of their own culture and to outline a plan for the moral and spiritual regeneration of their countries in the post-war world.

In this book, Alan Jacobs explores the poems, novels, essays, reviews, and lectures of these five central figures, in which they presented, with great imaginative energy and force, pictures of the very different paths now set before the Western democracies. Working mostly separately and in ignorance of one another’s ideas, the five developed a strikingly consistent argument that the only means by which democratic societies could be prepared for their world-wide economic and political dominance was through a renewal of education that was grounded in a Christian understanding of the power and limitations of human beings. The Year of Our Lord 1943 is the first book to weave together the ideas of these five intellectuals and shows why, in a time of unprecedented total war, they all thought it vital to restore Christianity to a leading role in the renewal of the Western democracies.

Now this will be fun. I first encountered the work of John Gray about 10 years ago, and was struck by his description of the “agonistic liberalism” of Isaiah Berlin. Gray’s Two Liberalisms picked up on and developed the themes in the book on Berlin in ways which influenced the way I thought about “tragedy” in law. I enjoyed Straw Dogs as well, but by this point there was an acidic quality in Gray’s writing that differed from the earlier books (I am not criticizing, just observing).

I have also noted Gray’s essays here at the forum before, always with admiration–whether on secular eschatology, Machiavelli and the weakness of law, or (my own favorite) the ubiquity of evil. He is iconoclastic, brilliant, bracingly skeptical, and deeply learned. And now comes a new must-read for law and religion types: Seven Types of Atheism (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Here is an early review (h/t Paul Horwitz) by Terry Eagleton in “The Guardian” (more positive, I think, than Eagleton’s very critical review of Straw Dogs). And here is the publisher’s description.

For a generation now, public debate has been corroded by a shrill, narrow derision of religion in the name of an often very vaguely understood ‘science’. John Gray’s stimulating and extremely enjoyable new book describes the rich, complex world of the atheist tradition, a tradition which he sees as in many ways as rich as that of religion itself, as well as being deeply intertwined with what is so often crudely viewed as its ‘opposite’.

The result is a book that sheds an extraordinary and varied light on what it is to be human and on the thinkers who have, at different times and places, battled to understand this issue.