My first two posts considered Harold Berman’s overall project and explained the basic ideas in Law and Revolution, Volumes I and II. In this post, I would like to consider Berman’s first book and its reconsideration of the advantages of polycentric forms of ordering for liberty. Polycentric forms of political ordering can occur when different sovereigns dispense law to the same subjects. Multiple independent forms of legal order can advance liberty for two reasons.
The Revolution Harold Berman Made, Part II
Law and Revolution
In the first post I introduced Berman’s overall project. Now I would like to explore Berman’s volumes in Law and Revolution which critique dominant views of the relation between law and society. Berman saw law as a reflection of society’s most profound beliefs rather than simply a mirror of its economic or technological structure. Because the most fundamental beliefs in the West were Christian, law thus necessarily depended on developments in Christianity. As law is refracted through such beliefs, it then shapes the structures that define the exercise of political power. Thus, Berman turns Marxist analysis on its head. It is not the social and economic structure that determines beliefs through power relations. Fundamental beliefs shape the social and economic structure through law.
Harold Berman’s Revolution in Western Legal Thought, Part I
In a series of posts, I will discuss the great enterprise of the late professor Harold Berman. That enterprise was nothing less than to relate fundamental developments in Christianity and other core beliefs to fundamental developments in law. In this post I will introduce Berman and his project. In the second, I will summarize some of the most important themes of his books. In the third and fourth, I will offer my own views on some of the implications of his narrative for liberty.
