"Shall Not the Judge of the Earth Deal Justly?": Accountability, Compassion, and Judicial Authority in the Biblical Story of Sodom and Gomorrah

Abstract

In his article, Unspeakable Ethics, Unnatural Law, Arthur Leff laments the death of God in jurisprudence. According to Leff, divine commands are the only source of law that is ultimately justifiable. “[T]he pronouncements of an omniscient, omnipotent, and infinitely good being are [by definition] always true and effectual,” he writes. “God's will is binding because it is His will that it be.” In the modern era, however, God's authority has been overthrown by our desire to decide for ourselves the standards of right and wrong. The absence of God, observes Leff, deprives us of a solid foundation for our legal system. Without instruction from above, laws are no more than human commands, based merely on human will: “Whenever we set out to find ‘the law,’ we are able to locate nothing more attractive, or more final, than ourselves.” Leff's recognition that behind the rule of law lies not the benevolence of divine guidance but the capriciousness of human will results in a jurisprudential despair that leads him to cry out ironically at the end of his essay, “God help us.”