Religion in Legal Thought and Practice

This book examines moral issues in public and private life from a religious but not devotional perspective. Rather than seeking to prove that one belief system or moral stance is right, it undertakes to help readers more fully understand the effect of religious beliefs and practices on ways of conceiving and addressing moral questions, without having to accept or to reject any specific religious outlook. It shows how the similarities between religions and the differences within any one religion are more important than the reverse. The book asks • Where do moral imperatives come from, and how do the answers found in religion and law interact? • How does the fact that a moral norm is grounded in religion affect our thinking about it? • What is the significance of the differences (and similarities) between religious and secular sources of moral norms?

Spis treści:
Part I. Introduction
1. Some opening prompts
2. Religion and the life of a lawyer
Part II. Moral Obligation and Religious Belief
3. What is the relation between the moral dimension of obligation and religious belief?
4. Does religious belief necessarily have moral content? Does religious belief have any necessary moral content?
5. What are the bases of resistance to religiously grounded morality?
6. Concepts of God, scripture, and revelation, the meanings of divine inspiration
7. Modes of religiously grounded moral discernment
Part III. Religion and Some Contemporary Moral Controversies
8. Economic justice
9. Bioethical questions
10. Abortion
11. Homosexual sex
Part IV. The Interaction Between Religion and the Secular Law
12. Render unto Caesar, religion and (dis)obedience to law
13. Religiously grounded morality and the reach of public law
14. Capital punishment
15. War
Part V. Responding to Religious Diversity
16. Holding the truth, lightly, religion, truth, and pluralism
17. Jewish Christian understanding, transcending the legacy of history
Part VI. Religiously Grounded Moral Decision-Making in Professional Life
18. Answering the call of faith in the practice of law.