Sessions and Romans

Many evangelicals and fundamentalists think our laws are derived from the Bible. Actually, the laws part is mostly Old Testament and the commentaries of Jesus on the subject make it apparent that would not agree with Justice Antonin Scalia’s “the rule of law is the law of rules.” In Matthew he told his followers that they could not enter the kingdom of heaven “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees.” Jesus called for justice, a word derived from the Latin for law.

The attorney general justified separating children from their parents by citing Romans 13. Now, laying aside biblical scholarly concerns on the authenticity and correctness of this letter by Paul, the fact is that it is addressed to the Romans.

Roman law started out for the tribe, but as Rome grew from republic to empire, Roman law was transformed and developed. Primitive tribal rules, turned into the foundation of modern jurisprudence, were enacted by most European countries and absorbed indirectly into the common law of England.

This transformation was work of the jurists, a specialized legal bureaucracy. Guiding them was the belief not just in rules but in the outcome, justice and “extreme justice is extreme injustice.” Law came to be grounded in natural law. And as the Laws of Cicero put it, “man is born for justice, and that law and equity are not a mere establishment of opinion, but an institute of nature.” So when Paul told Romans to obey the law, he trusted their law to do justice.

So where does that leave 2,000 children? In 1939 the German steamer St. Louis was not permitted to land its cargo of largely Jewish children. The American Legion and the Daughters of the American Revolution rejoiced. What was done to the Jews in Germany was done by law. What is being done to children here is that both Sessions and Sarah Sanders used the Bible against what Jesus stood for and what Paul meant.

MICHAEL B. DOUGAN Jonesboro