“The source of the supremacy of the law in the plurality of legal jurisdictions and legal systems within the same legal order is threatened in the twentieth century by the tendency within each country to swallow up all the diverse jurisdictions and systems in a single central program of legislation and administrative regulation. The churches have long since ceased to constitute an effective legal counterweight to the secular authorities. The custom of mercantile and other autonomous communities or trades within the economic and social order has been overridden by legislative and administrative controls. International law has enlarged its theoretical claim to override national law, but in practice national law has either expressly incorporated international law or else has rendered it ineffectual as a recourse for individual citizens. In federal systems such as that of the United States, the opportunity to escape from one set of courts to another has radically diminished. Blackstone’s concept of two centuries ago that we live under a considerable number of different legal systems has hardly any counterpart in contemporary legal thought.”

Harold J. Berman
Law and Revolution – pg. 39-40

What Berman is getting at is that the State has swallowed whole all other competing jurisdictions. Note here that Berman assumes that the Church, was and is supposed to be an effective legal counterweight to the State (”Secular” authorities). Today what we have are well educated people inside the Church saying the Church positively should not be or even aspire to be a effective legal counterweight to the state. Today what we have are well educated people inside the Church whose principles on Church State relations will result in a culture that is defined by and exists for the State so that it really will be the case that in the state we live, move, and have our being. Today what we have are well educated people inside the Church who, because they will not resist the vast expansion of the State, are insuring the states monolithic ability to be the governor and legislator of a false reality.

Historically, in the West, the State was only one of several areas of realm sovereignty. Historically, a sphere appropriate sovereignty was seen to exist in the church, in the home, in the guilds, and even in the universities. This arrangement allowed a check against unbridled usurpation by any one sphere over the others and allowed for the development of a culture where unity and diversity could flourish. Unity because all realms of sovereignty were answerable to God. Diversity because no one realm was allowed to accrue all the sovereignty to itself. Sovereign Sovereignty or absolute sovereignty was seen as being God’s alone.

Now we have a situation in the Revolutionary West where sovereignty has been consolidated and that consolidation in the State has led it to legislate in such a way that sovereignty can not flow back to any of its historic competitors. The State, as such, as become the backdrop against which everyone, both individuals and institutions, define themselves. The Church, the family, the schools, the workplace, the economic realm, all find their meaning in omni-legislative state. The State has become the Borg and resistance is futile against becoming assimilated. This is what Berman means when he says above, “the custom of mercantile and other autonomous communities or trades within the economic and social order has been overridden by legislative and administrative controls.”

Now, what proves the reality of all this is that advocating that counterweights to the State should be re-vivified and re-animated is greeted with looks of bewilderment or horror. If one contends that the Church should once again be a counterweight to the State, we are being told, by many in the Church that we are violating Scripture. If one contends that home and family should once again be a counterweight to the State individual Christians recoil at such “radical” behavior as they send of their little Johnny and Suzy to the Government concentration and re-education camps (public schools). Christians who contend that the state should have effective legal, moral, social, and cultural counterweights are seen to be certifiably nuts.

Berman ends the quote by noting how all of this centralizing is going globalist. Berman work was written in 1984. In the last nearly quarter of a century this internationalizing of the law has accelerated even more. We are at the point now where members of our own Supreme Court will consider international law in their decision making process on cases before them.

Finally, understand the reason that Blackstone could talk about “living under a considerable number of different legal systems” was because such thinking arose out of Christian soil and Christian theology where the idea of the one and the many was found in Christian trinitarian thought. The idea that God was at the same time One and Many led to creating a culture where the one and many idea was replicated in Christian society through creating different legal systems. This, at the same time, served to keep sovereignty in God alone. Decentralizing and diffusing sovereignty was a uniquely Christian act, and the reason that model “has hardly any counterpart in contemporary legal thought,” is due to the fact that we as a people are no longer Christian but are now functional humanist unitarians where all that exists is the one, and that one is located in the State. Ironically, all contemporary cries for diversity serve the end of unity.