Patriarchal Religion, Sexuality, and Gender: A Critique of New Natural Law - Hardcover

Bamforth, Nicholas; Richards, David A. J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521868637 ISBN 13: 9780521868631

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2007

Synopsis

Fundamentalist forms of religion today claim authority everywhere, including the debates over the politics and constitutional law of liberal democracies. This book examines this general question through its critical evaluation of a recent school of thought: that of the new natural lawyers. The new natural lawyers are the lawyers of the current Vatical hierarchy, polemically concerned to defend its retrograde views on matters of sexuality and gender in terms of arguments that, in fact, notably lack the philosophical rigor of the historical Thomism they claim to honor. The book critiques forms of fundamentalism and offers an original argument both for how they arose and why they are unreasonable in contemporary circumstances.

About this title

Book Description:

By looking at Thomas Aquinas' school of thought and comparing it to the new natural lawyers, this book offers a glimpse at the disconnect. Fundamentalist forms of religion claim authority everywhere, even in the secular United States. This book examines the new natural lawyers' flawed way of viewing hierarchy and offer a critique of the forms of fundamentalism and how they arose . The book also shows that alternative forms of Christianity are available that are free from such defects.

About the Author:

David A. J. Richards is Edwin D. Webb Professor of Law at New York University School of Law. He received his AB from Harvard College in 1966, his D. Phil. in moral philosophy from Oxford University in 1971, and his JD from Harvard Law School in 1971. His Oxford Doctoral dissertation was published by Oxford University Press in 1971 as A Theory of Reasons for Action, and he has published an additional 12 books, including Sex, Drugs, Death, and the Law: An Essay on Human Rights and Overcriminalization (Rowan and Littlefield, 1982) which was named the best book in criminal justice ethics by the John Jay College of Criminal Ethics in 1982. Choice Magazine named his book Foundations of American Constitutionalism (Oxford) one of the best academic books of the year in 1989. He has served as vice-president of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy and was the Shikes lecturer in civil liberties at the Harvard Law School in 1998.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0521868637
• ISBN 13: 9780521868631
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 416