St. Maximos' Hut

There is a very thought provoking paper available on SSRN by David Skeel and William J. Stuntz with the above title.

I'm on the road, and so have limited connectability, and so have to keep this short. But here's an interesting point they raise (I'll have more to say about the paper later, when I get home):

Skeel and Stuntz set out an intriguing argument about the differences between divine law and human law. Human law, in a fallen world,

must play a double game: restraining the worst wrongs by the citizenry without empowering judges and prosecutors to do wrong themselves [through selective enforcement]. The key to playing that double game well is to limit law's reach. Only the most destructive and most readily verifiable wrongs are forbidden, because forbidding more would turn punishment over to the discretion of law enforcers.

God's law is not bound by those limits, because it plays no double game. The Lawmaker need not restrain Himself; He is not the problem. We are.

They go on to suggest that conservative evangelicals have more in common with libertarians than either thinks, because once this distinction is fully recognized and analyzed, there are powerful reasons to leave lots of morals-based laws to God and keep them out of the U.S. Code.

It's a really intriguing argument and an excellent paper.