Laws, Morals and Politics

For some years it has not been popular to hold a version of the thesis that there is a necessary connection between law and morality, a thesis usually taken to mean that one cannot refer to a social norm which is in some way immoral as "valid law." This, in any case, is what Thomistic and Neothomistic "natural law theorists" conceive to be the significance of law and morality as "necessarily connected." And this, given the presumptions concerning morality which are involved in the Thomistic position, may be what accounts for the current unpopularity of the position. I will argue that the Thomistic variation on the theme of a necessary connection between law and morality is indeed only one interpretation of the theme, for which alternative scores have been written—ones which allow a considerable amount of improvisation.