Subsidiarity Revisited

"Subsidiarity, Federalism and the Best Constitution: Thomas
Aquinas on City, Province and Empire"
     Law and Philosophy, Forthcoming

  Contact:  NICHOLAS ARONEY
              TC Beirne School of Law
    Email:  [email protected]
Auth-Page:  http://ssrn.com/author=89918

Full Text:  http://ssrn.com/abstract=890811

This article closely examines the way in which Thomas Aquinas
understood the relationship between the various forms of human
community. The article focuses on Aquinas's theory of law and
politics and, in particular, on his use of "political"
categories, such as city, province and empire, together with the
associated concepts of kingdom and nation, as well as various
"social" groupings, such as household, clan and village,
alongside of the distinctly "ecclesiastical" categories of
parish, diocese and universal church.

The analysis of these categories is used in the article to help
explain Aquinas's role in the development of theories about
subsidiarity, federalism and mixed constitutionalism. In the
first place, it is argued that a close inquiry into Aquinas's
discussion of the many and various forms of human community sheds
light on the origins and development of the idea of subsidiarity
within Catholic social teaching. Second, while Aquinas certainly
did not advance a theory of federalism as that idea is presently
understood, it is argued that recovering what Aquinas had to say
about the categories of human community helps us to understand
the origin and later development of federal ideas. Finally, it is
argued that far from endorsing a system of absolute monarchy as
is sometimes alleged, when understood in this way, Aquinas
supported a particular kind of mixed constitution in which
monarchy is "tempered" by a variety of constitutional constraints
founded upon a conception of the body politic as itself
constructed out of a plurality of smaller, intermediate
corporations and communities of a political, ecclesiastical and
social character.
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