Recently in Law Category

My question for the opening post in this series is "what is 'Law'?"

Here's the questions for this post: Which approach - formalism or realism - better accounts for "law" and for the role of "law" in society?  As Christians living in a post-industrial, scientific, and/or postmodern age, are there approaches to "law" we can adopt without falling into either an extreme formalism or an extreme legal realism?

Many people respond to this question with what legal scholars would call a "formalist" definition:  law is a set of rules or principles that govern behavior.   This sort of definition raises important questions about the sources of "law" and the functions of a legal system.  

In the Western tradition, "law" historically was rooted in metaphysics - for the Greeks, in the realm of pure thought (Plato's "forms"); for the Romans, in the divine authority of the Emperor; and for Christendom, in God, particularly as God's will was mediated through the Church, reason, and the King.   During the Enlightenment, "law" was still mostly conceived of in formalist terms, but the primary source of law became reason, or "Natural Law."   This is why the Declaration of Independence grounds universal human rights in the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God."