MOSES: CENTER OR SIDELINE?

The east pediment of the U.S. Supreme Court building features Solon of Athens as a western lawgiver and Confucius of China as an eastern lawgiver. But In the center between them, taller seated than Solon and Confucius standing, is Moses holding the Ten Commandments – a recognition that the Decalogue is the moral foundation of law.

The basic principles of our legal system are found in the Ten Commandments:

• Respect for life, found in the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” and in our homicide and wrongful death laws.

• Respect for property, found in the commandment “Thou shalt not steal” and in our property and theft laws.

• Respect for family, found in the commandments “Honor thy father and thy mother” and “Thou shalt not commit adultery” and in our laws and court decisions protecting the family as the basic unit of society.

• Respect for truth, found in the commandments “Thou shalt not bear false witness” and “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain” and in our perjury laws.

• Respect for God, found in the commandment “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” and in the Declaration’s reference to “the laws of nature and of nature’s God” and the “unalienable rights” endowed by the Creator.

But how did these fundamental principles of law make their way from Mt. Sinai to the courtrooms and legislative chambers of today? Let us trace the connection.

As St. Patrick (5th century AD) evangelized Ireland, he carried with him copies of a Celtic law book Liber ex Lege Moisi (The Book of the Law of Moses) and gave them to the Brehon (Druid) judges.

When Alfred the Great drafted his Book of Dooms in AD 890, the first written law code to govern all England, he began it with the Ten Commandments and interspersed Bible reference throughout the code.

In medieval Europe, Rabbi Moses Bn Maimon (Maimonides, AD 1135-1204) took the Old Testament monetary laws and drafted them into a code that became the commercial code for much of Europe.

During and after the Renaissance, many European kings revied the old Roman concept of imperium and claimed for themselves absolute power. “L’Etat, c’est moi” (“I am the state”) is attributed to Louis XIV of France, supported by Thomas Hobbes’s support of the absolute state in his Leviathan.

But others feared absolute power and favored republican government – and they looked to the Bible, especially the Old Testament, for a defense of republicanism. One of these was John Selden (1584-1654), a member of the English Parliament and drafter of the Petition of Right. Selden was above all a Hebrew scholar whose writings included De Successionibus in Bona Secundum Leges Ebraeorum (1631), De Jure Naturali et Gentium Juxta Disciplinam Ebraeorum (1640) and others. These works on Hebrew Law, coupled with his studies of English legal history and English constitutionalism, set forth a Biblical basis for republican thought.

The Dutch scholar Patrus Cunaeus (1586-1638) penned The Hebrew Republic, not to be confused with another work by the same title by the Italian scholar Carlos Sigonius (1523-1594). Cunaeus declared in his preface,

“I ask you, illustrious Members of States, to study over and again the Hebrew Republic -- the holiest and best of all -- which I have described in this book. It contains ideas that kings, leaders, and the administrations of republics may adopt for their own use.”

The Calvinist law professor Johannes Althusius (c. 1557-1638) wrote the classic Politica, legal and theological justification for the Dutch secession from Spain and a grand design for federalism based on Scripture and natural law. His 1614 Preface stated,

“The precepts of the Decalogue are included to the extent that they infuse a vital spirit into the association and symbiotic life that we seek, and that they provide and constitute a way, rule, guiding star, and boundary for human society.”

Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) is often called the “father of international law.” Along with his classic The Rights [Law] of War and Peace, he published an early Protestant work of Christian apologetics, The Truth of the Christian Religion. In War and Peace he argued that international law cold be binding on both Christian and non-Christian nations because of their common understanding of natural law, but the Mosaic Law can be useful in understanding natural law because

...what it [the Law of Moses] enjoins is not contrary to the law of nature. For since the law of nature is perpetual and unchangeable, nothing contrary to it could be commanded by God, who is never unjust. Besides, the Law of Moses is called in the xix Psalm an undefiled and right law, and St. Paul, Romans Vii. 12, describes it to be holy, just, and good.

Sir William Blackstone (1723-1780), whose Commentaries on the Laws of England sold almost as many copies in America as in England, said all human law must be based upon the Law of Nature and the Revealed Law, which he said is found only in the Holy Scriptures. “Upon these two foundations,” he wrote, “the law of nature and the law of revelation depend all human laws, that is to say, no human law should be suffered to contradict these.”

So when we place the Ten Commandments in schools and courthouses, we are not inserting religion into government. We are simply restoring the Decalogue to its rightful place as the moral foundation of law.

Colonel Eidsmoe serves as Professor of Constitutional Law for the Oak Brook College of Law & Government Policy (obcl.edu) and as Senior Counsel for the Foundation for Moral Law (morallaw.org). He may be reached for speaking engagements at eidsmoeja@juno.com.

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