Today a new blog, Ius & Iustitium, has launched. It is an outgrowth of The Josias devoted to jurisprudence and legal theory. No doubt the development will please the enthusiasts of “Big Integralism.” I am happy to say that I have contributed a piece to the blog about Fr. Thomas Crean and Prof. Alan Fimister’s book, Integralism, and their treatment of the Lex Regia and its medieval reception. Certainly, despite my criticism about this issue (and others), I think Integralism is a fine way to start a more serious phase of the discussion.

Despite my high opinion of my work, I suspect everyone is going to be very interested in Adrian Vermeule’s piece, which builds upon his common-good conservatism argument. It sparked a huge debate when he first set it out in The Atlantic. Certainly any argument that a substantive vision of the good has a place in law is going to be hugely interesting to Catholics, and rightly so. While I certainly hope for the success of any project I am involved with, I think that Ius & Iustitium is going to be an interesting, exciting project—especially with the state of the discourse, as it were.

A less serious phase of the discussion was my satire on Anglo-American originalism at The Josias. The technical aspect of the argument, I think, is actually correct: the English law on punishing heretics comes pretty directly from Frederick II’s imperial legislation by the way of Boniface VIII’s decretals. The English common law remains an important background source (and, in fact, a default) for American law. It is fun, I think, to give the originalists a dose of their own medicine with precisely the sort of antiquarian research that passes for jurisprudence in those circles, though aimed at a very different conclusion than the one most of them would like.

But all this jurisprudence—if it can be called such—has been in service of a goal, of sorts. In following the recent debates over integralism, especially the debates on Twitter, the popular microblogging website favored by so many of the cultural and political leaders of the age, it is increasingly clear that an important fault line is juridical thought. Some of the leading critics of integralism, including Michael Hanby and various graduate students, seem to be unaware of the Church’s juridical tradition, stretching back through Gratian to the early canonists, and the substantive content of that tradition.

The ignorance leads to strange mistakes. For example, when discussing coercion, some critics of integralism seem blissfully unaware that the Church to this very hour claims the right to coerce the faithful, even in temporalities—and no less an authority than John Paul II declared this was entirely consistent with Vatican II’s ecclesiology. They also love to spool out elaborate “Augustinian” political theologies. However, they seem unaware that Gratian, who established the foundations of the Church’s jurisprudence for 700 years or so, happily took what he wanted from Augustine in his Causae hereticorum (and elsewhere) to justify all sorts of things they’d get queasy about.

I think certain trends in the discourse are attempts to solve fundamentally juridical problems with reference to some other discipline, such as theology, political theory, or political economy. In some instances, this may be required by preexisting commitments. However, some questions simply are not amenable to solution by proxy. Ultimately integralism is a question in the juridical dimension: the theoretical component is relatively modest. Implementing the theoretical component, however, requires juridical solutions. By the same token, an objection to integralism is primarily a juridical argument and ought not to be disguised with St. Augustine or Karl Marx or some other figure.

Additionally, it is clear that Christians generally find themselves in a space where the law matters. Justice Neil Gorsuch’s recent decision regarding the sex discrimination provision of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 will undoubtedly have an impact on the Church and other Christian groups. What that impact is remains to be seen. The Court, for example, has two ministerial exception cases that have yet to be decided this Term. There are other important cases, including a replay of the Hellerstedt case set in Louisiana. Meanwhile, in the context of a challenge to Illinois’s coronavirus restrictions, Judge Frank Easterbrook of the Seventh Circuit declared that churches could find workarounds for in-person services, since, after all, feeding the spirit is less serious than feeding the body (like a shelter or soup kitchen).

The juridical dimension matters. Ius & Iustitium, for my part, is a welcome development if all it does is emphasize the importance of juridical thought for Catholics.