The Security Council is an anachronism. It establishes international government by the great powers. It presupposes a set of great powers capable of regulating international conflicts. This is no longer the case.

The Perils of Liberal Moralism: 

On Syria and Thomas More

by Carson Holloway

Law is inevitably informed by morality, but it is not the same thing as morality. When we forget this, when we insist that what is wrong must be unlawful, or that it must be lawful to punish every wrong, we undermine the rule of law.

Robert Bolt teaches this lesson memorably in A Man for All Seasons, his play about the life and death of Sir Thomas More. In a key scene, More, then serving as the Lord Chancellor, has just dismissed a young associate, Richard Rich, who has revealed himself to be an informant for More’s political enemies. All of More’s family members present urge him, on various vaguely moral grounds, to arrest Rich; but More, on legal grounds, insists just as strongly that he will not.

More’s daughter Margaret admonishes him that Rich is a “bad” man. More responds that “there’s no law against that.” Roper, More’s son-in-law, observes that being bad is contrary to God’s law. “Then God can arrest him,” More responds, using humor to remind this earnest, not to say fanatical, young man that God’s law and man’s law are not simply the same, and that violation of God’s law is not necessarily grounds for arrest by human political authorities. More’s wife Alice says with disgust: “While you talk, he’s gone.” More’s rejoinder: “And go he should, if he was the Devil himself, until he broke the law.”

This last remark reveals the extent of More’s commitment to the rule of law. Roper is aghast that More would give the “Devil benefit of law,” admitting that he would not only “cut a great road through the law” to get at the devil, but would in fact “cut down every law in England” to do so. More’s beautiful and crushing response is worth quoting in full:

And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you—where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast—man’s laws, not God’s—and if you cut them down—and you’re just the man to do it—do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.

More’s point is simple but essential. Morality tells us what is wrong. Law tells us what is punishably wrong.

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