Robert George on "The Moral Purposes of Law and Government"

Earlier this week, I made the trip to New York City for the Institute on Religion and Public Life's annual Erasmus Lecture, which was delivered this year by MOJ-friend Prof. Robert George.  The lecture -- presented to a standing-room-only, overflow crowd -- was called "On the Purposes of Law and Government:  First Principles and Contemporary Challenges."

The lecture will be published, I'm told, later in First Things.  In the meantime, though . . . Here are the opening few paragraphs:

The obligations and justifying purposes of law and government are to protect public health, safety, and morals, and to advance the general welfare -- including, preeminently, protecting people's fundamental rights and basic liberties.

Stop right there.  One can hear already the Libertarian's objection:  "Hold on!  Isn't there a train-wreck of a clash coming between the purpose of protecting 'public . . . morals' and 'protecting . . . basic liberties'"? 

At first blush, this classic formulation . . . of the purposes and powers of government seems to accord public authority vast and sweeping powers.  Yet, in truth, the general welfare (or common good) requires that government be limited.  Although government's responsibility is primary in respect of defending the nation from attack and subversions, protecting people from physical assaults and various other forms of depredation, and maintaining public order, its role is otherwise subsidiary:  to support the work of the families, religious communities, and other institutions of civil society that shoulder the primary burden of forming upright and decent citizens, caring for those in need, encouraging people to meet their responsibilities to one another, and discouraging them from harming themselves or others.

Governmental respect for individual freedom and the autonomy of nongovernmental spheres of authority is, then, a requirement of political morality.

To say this (i.e., what was just said) is not to go over entirely (or even very much) to the libertarian view:

The strict libertarian position . . . goes much too far in depriving government of even its subsidiary role.  It underestimates the importance of maintaining a reasonably healthy moral ecology, especially for the rearing of children, and it fails to appreciate the legitimate, albeit once again limited, role of law and government in maintaining such an ecology.

So, in just these few paragraphs, we see flagged at least two points that, I think, will need to be at the heart of any "Catholic legal theory":  First, a just government (i.e., one that is appropriatedly directed to the common good, properly understood) is a constitutionally limited (though not a libertarian) government.  Second, the "common good" consists, among other things, of a "moral ecology" conducive to human flourishing, including child rearing, and even an appropriately limited government must attend to the health of this moral ecology.