And it is a great privilege for me to be with you at Acton University this summer. Eight years ago, our family had to make a decision about a move, and we ended up deciding to come to grand rapids. And in our pro and con list, the physical presence of the Acton Institute in grand rapids was a major plus. On the good side. So im glad to be here. Im also glad that we are here in person. It wasnt too long ago when we had to meet in a rather gnostic fashion, and so that we were able to meet incarnation early is a very good thing. Im also delighted to join you because we are discussing the intersection of c. S. Lewis, liberty and law, or jack lewis, as he was known to his friends and family. If your name was clive staples, you might go by jack as well. If youre attending this session, i probably dont have to sell you on why lewis liberty and law is a fun combination. I hope youll find our conversation illuminating. Whether you are new to lewis or a long time admirer. Speaking of newcomers to lewis, we get one nice account of meeting lewis for the first time from george sayer, who was a student of lewiss at oxford and one of lewiss first biographers. He writes, as i walked away from New Buildings and as an aside, oxfords New Buildings were completed in 1458. I found the man that lewis had called taylors sitting on one of the stone steps in front of the arcade. How did you get on . He asked. Oh, i think rather well. I think he will be a most interesting tutor to have. Interesting . Yes. Hes certainly that said, the man who i later learned was j. R. R. Tolkien. Youll never get to the bottom of him, but were not going to get to the bottom of him either. Right here now. But we are going to try to make some headway into lewiss views. I want to hit on four areas about lewis law and liberty in my opening remarks and as food for thought for our discussion afterwards. First, that contra to the conventional wisdom that lewis disdained and ignored politics. His personal life was very much intertwined with politics and law, and sometimes even policy. And one event in particular spurred him to write a short essay in which he endorses a version of limited government theory in almost explicitly lockean terms. So the first point is about lewiss personal and indeed biographical interest in things political. Second, well talk a little bit about a particular the justice issue that lewis was quite invested in. He was no wonk, to be sure, but he did get a bit into the Public Policy weeds when it came to the criminal justice system. Lewis cared deeply about law on the human level and its impact on Human Flourishing and freedom. Third will move from that specific policy issue to the big political picture. Lewis wrestled with the purpose of government on a macro scale, particularly with his very conflicted attitude about the welfare state. Lewis was, by instinct and temperament, very sympathetic to a more libertarian approach and a get off my lawn conservatism. But he also later in life became more aware of the plight of the less fortunate and thus, in his view, more open to Government Solutions to poverty. Fourth, we moved from human made law in human politics to god authored law with a capital l. Lewis is justly famous for his defense of natural law or what he referred to as the law of Human Behavior in mirror christianity or the dow in the abolition of man. This is the endure law from which any merely human law gets its legitimacy as we will see. Lewis is not so much a natural law theorist, but he is. It is safe to say a natural law apologist. Ill conclude by suggesting that all of lewiss musings about politics, law, both civil and natural and liberty, are framed in a teleological context. That is his understanding of liberty, properly understood is directional. Its heading somewhere. We, as human beings are heading somewhere. And to miss this aspect of lewiss teaching is to miss understand everything else. We might get from him. So claim number one, the personal life and the political. The conventional wisdom on lewis was that he really didnt care much for politics or for law, and that he thus would not have spent much time on those things or liberty either. And theres some truth to that in one respect. But the truth is also that he was surrounded by talk of law and politics from his early childhood, all the way through his death on november 22nd, 1963. Also the same day that jfk goes down in dallas. And aldous huxley, author of brave new world, passes away. We dont have time for the full case about lewis Politics Today or his views. He did remain interested in politics throughout his entire life. His father, albert lewis, was a lawyer and apparently took his work home with him. Lewiss older brother, warning, described their childhood as dominated by a one sided torrent of grumble and vituperation about irish politics. And its admittedly hard to avoid talk of law and politics. If you were growing up in northern ireland, as lewis did. Lewis his life as a young man was also dominated by political matters, as after 1914, all young british men his age knew that sooner or later they would be drafted to serve in the first world war. And lewis did serve in the infantry in world war one, fighting in the trenches and getting wounded. His father had tried to get him in the artillery, but lewis was so bad at math that that wasnt going to be an option. So if you struggle with math, you are in good company. With lewis. His life as a young man after the war became much more scholarly, of course, and on his return to oxford, he wrote to his father about reconvening with his fellow students. Most now veterans in the Junior Common Room of University College in oxford in 1919, and they read the minutes from their last meeting are made some five years before. With nothing to record. In the meantime, i dont know of any little thing that has made me realize the absolute suspension and waste of these years. More thoroughly. Lewis reflected all the enlistments and training, the viscera and trauma of the fighting men in the trenches and the resulting physical and spiritual brokenness that came from political decisions and counter decisions made by european politicians, civil servants, servants and military leaders. The staggering waste and incomprehensible loss caused by the great war cast an immense shadow over the turn of the century. Generation of britons. Its no wonder that lewis would harbor a lifelong distrust of government. As with most of us, lewiss political views were intimately connected to his biography, and so biographical details shed some light on those views. I want to focus on one particular event from lewiss personal life that gives us an interesting insight into his view of law and liberty. Lewis married joy Davidson Gresham in 1956, first in a civil ceremony, and then in a real Anglican Service in december of that year as joys death from cancer was imminent. This is the account depicted in the film in the play shadowlands. Joy did recover from her cancer, and they had a four short but happy years together before the cancer return and took her life at the age of 43. In july of 1960. What you may not know about joy lewis was that she was a divorcee, a former communist, a trenchant and rather salty literary critic, and an american of eastern european, jewish background. And as a good american. She, of course, had a shotgun and she was known to be rather prolific with that shotgun in the backyard of lewiss at the kilns in oxford. During this time, the lewiss had some trouble with some local young men. Really. Hooligans who had trespass on their property and vandalize, steal, cut down trees, all sorts of mischief crimes. And on one occasion, when lewis was wheeling joy around for a walk in their backyard, they caught the young man in the act. Lewis shiver closely jumped in front of joy in his wheelchair, ostensibly to protect her. And i cant repeat in this company exactly what joyce said, but i will paraphrase. It was something to the effect of, gosh darn it, jack. Get out of my way. Youre blocking my aim. One result of this encounter was lewiss rather curmudgeonly piece, delinquents in the snow published in a humor magazine in 1957, where you see some of the hooligans were later caught by the police and tried and caught. In this essay, lewis complains about how the Legal Process had failed miserably. The presiding judge had let them off with a fine and encouraged them to stop such pranks as if planned robbery and vandalism are mere pranks. Lewis worried about what such leniency might mean for englands political future. And he took this opportunity to describe how the social compact should work in theory. While warning of the consequences if the system broke down in practice, according to the classical political theory of this country, lewis summarized, we surrendered our right of selfprotection to the state on the condition that the state would protect us. So a dilemma arises when the state does not live up to its end of the bargain. The states promise of protect is what morally grounds are obligate nation to civil obedience. According to lewis. If this sounds to you a little bit like john locke, then i think youre on to something. The governments protection of natural rights, including the right to property, is why it is right for us to pay taxes. And wrong for us to exercise as vigilante justice. Lewis argues the state protects us less because it is unwilling to protect us against criminals at home and manifestly grows less and less able to protect us against a foreign enemies. At the same time, it demands from us more and more. We seldom had fewer rights and liberties, nor more burdens, and we get less security in return, while our obligations increase. Their moral ground is taken away. Lewis drew the same conclusion from this state of affairs that locke did. When the state can not or will not protect, lewis warns nature. Is come again. And the right of selfprotection reverts to the individual. I share this reflection of lewiss not only as an excuse to tell that story about joy lewis and her shotgun, but because it illustrates well the libertarian leaning. Leave me alone. Literally. Get off my lawn. Side of lewiss personality in most of his public writings, he was very careful not to appear too partizan. Politically, one way or another, going so far as to turn down a Winston Churchills proposal to honor lewis by making him a commander of the british empire. Lewis feared that would be used by some of his critics to paint him as a political conservative. But we do see here in this episode and the piece that resulted from it a little bit of lewiss views, he had a deep distrust of government power, whether it was misused in foreign wars or not, used properly enough to keep the domestic peace. And this deep distrust was not merely theoretical, but personal felt by lewis. So claim number two, lewis on law and Public Policy. Lewis has interest in criminal justice. Extended beyond this particular case with the hooligans. In may of 1962. Lewis wrote to the poet t. S. Eliot the following we must have a talk. Id wish i wish youd write an essay on it about punishment. The modern view by excluding the retributive element and concentrating solely on deterrence and cure is hideously immoral. It is vile. Tyranny. To submit a man to compulsive or a cure or sacrifice is him to the deterrence of others. Unless he deserves it. One might wonder why lewis didnt write the essay himself, except that he did. 13 years earlier, lewis wrote the humanitarian theory of punishment, which appeared first in an austrian law journal in 1949. He sent it to an australian journal because he could get no hearing for it in england. Nevertheless, the piece did elicit responses from three law professors in australia to whom lewis then in turn responded, and the resulting back and forth was published in rtes judge adjudicator. Then the law journal of the university of melbourne law school. You can now find lewis a side of this spirited, but well mannered debate in the garden. The dark collection in is the lincolns essay about the hooligans. Lewis was concerned about offenders being let off too easily and what that means for the fundamental social compact. Here he is concerned with criminals being treated as less than human. He was worried about developments in european jurisprudence such that deterrence and rehabilitation soon become the chief goals of the criminal justice system. Rather than punishing a wrongdoer simply because he or she deserves it. It may sound paradoxical, but lewis believed that when we punish a human being for a wrong, we acknowledge the dignity of that human being and make possible restoration. Because that human being should have and could have known better have the dignity enough to have known better. There is nothing wrong with deterring crime or rebuild, hating a criminal as a side effect of a prison term. Lewis argued, but if those are the chief priorities, then there are serious problems. First, deterrence treats the criminal who is still a human being made in gods image of intrinsic worth as a mere means rather than an end in himself. In that case, the more effective the punishment, the more effective the punishment so that the state might put on for the public, the better. From the point of deterrence, what lewis worried about was the truth of whether the accused is actually guilty or not doesnt matter. Its the effect of the show. Rehabilitate shown as the chief priority. Lewis worried meant that instead of criminals being sentenced by their peers to a designee rated amount of time as punishment for what theyve done, criminals will instead be treated as patients who are sick and it will be experts in psychology and penology who will determine when or if they are ever cured. And only then will they be released. And unlike a prison sentence, theres no time limit on when that will happen. And yet, individuals freedom will still be restricted. It will still feel like a sentence. But theres no limit to that restriction in principle, except what the expert doctors have to say. And who are we . Ordinary citizens, to question the considerable expertise of the experts. Lewis insisted that only the concept of moral desert and ground, legitimate punishment and limit the states abuse of power. We see in this essay how seriously lewis took human freedom and dignity and that he applied it even to those people, criminals whose interests and dignity, society is most likely to ignore or overlook. We see also in the response from the australian scholars of law that they took lewis seriously on this point, which is rather remarkable given his day job was as a tutor of english and a scholar of medieval and renaissance literature. We also see how important this policy issue was to lewis as 13 years later, near the end of his life, while convalescing from Serious Health issues, he tries to get t. S. Eliot to take up the case. Claim number three. Thus far, weve discussed lewiss personal connections to his thinking about politics and a particular policy area. He cared a great deal about criminal justice. Now we move to lewiss thinking about government at a more theoretical level, and in particular, the welfare state. And both the legitimate purpose of government and the temptation that come with the use of power. Lewis was deeply concerned about the abuses of an overly ambitious government. After all, human depravity gives both the rationale for government as well as reason to fear its excesses. In a short essay called equality, lewis says, i am a democrat because i believe in the fall of man as a calvin professor, i have to get human depravity in the fall in there by contract. And lewis here endorses it. He says that many others endorsed democracy for the wrong reasons. And he mentions here rousseau because they think human being so naturally good that everyone deserves a share in government. Lewis goes on to say, i know for myself i dont deserve a share in ruling a hen roost. Let alone a government. Lewis wrestled with the tension between his desire for a limited government, which both protects and respects a robust private sphere and massive social needs that seemingly only government can address. Government must exist, lewis acknowledged. But he also insisted that government exists for the good of individual groups and individuals and their liberty. Consider what lewis wrote about the ultimate purpose of government. As long as we are thinking of natural values, we must say that the sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household, laughing together over a meal or two, friends talking over a pint of beer or a man alone reading a book that interests him and that all economies, politics, laws and institutions save insofar as they prolong and multiply such scenes are a mere plowing the sand and sowing the ocean, a meaningless vanity and vexation of the spirit. Collective activities are, of course, necessary, but this is the end to which they are necessary. Lewis insisted that the state exists for individuals and households and not the other way round. We see here a break from some of lewiss favorite teachers, plato and aristotle. Lewis was a platonist. Lewis was an aristotelian, but both those thinkers alike favor the collective over the individual. The public over the private, and aristotle in particular defines a political activity as an intrinsically natural part of Human Flourishing. Lewis, on the other hand, saw political activity as only a means and often a distasteful one at that. To genuine aspects of Human Flourishing. Not an intrinsic part of flourishing itself. Yet even as only a means collective activities are necessary. And lewis recognized the appeal of technocratic Government Solutions to address our collective social problems. The temptation to invest government with more power, he noted, always works on a real need. That has been neglected. Lewis feared that legitimate human problems that require social coordination and collective activity will give rise to solutions that are far worse than the original crisis, something we may have witnessed in the last few years. In his book that hideous strength, the conclusion to his Science Fiction trilogy this there is a conspiratorial Government Organization and i see the National Institute of coordinated experiments. This illustrates exactly his fear. And if you actually go and google uk and i see there is such a Government Organization, it