In 1950, a work destined to become a classic was released, Protestant Biblical Interpretation by Bernard Ramm. It quickly became a textbook used by a huge number of Protestant seminaries. It was one of the last hermeneutics textbooks of wide acceptance that still took the viewpoint that by the use of a type of “scientific” […]

So, if our civil system relies on both written law and common law, are there any western systems that fully and only rely on written laws, with no common law? Well, actually there was an attempt at such a system. What is that system? The Code Napoleón of France, promulgated by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1804. […]

OK, so in the USA (and the entire British Empire) we run a mixture of written law and common law. While we say in the USA that the Constitution is the maximum law of the land, that actually does not say as much as we think it does for a two reasons. One is the […]

Now yesterday, I laid out just some of the very conservative approaches to constitutional law in the United States. But, those are not the only interpretations, and they do not take into account a very important concept called “common law.” You see, our system of justice is not purely written law based, it is also […]

Strict interpretation or not strict interpretation, that is the question. Actually, it is the question that we have been debating for many years. With Judge Sotomayor the question came back to the fore. No, I am not going to take a position on the judge herself, lest you lose the point of these next couple […]