Sir, - The rather offensive letter from Edward Burke (October 14th) challenges what I said in relation to the natural law. If the position he takes up is correct, then the law-maker - be it parliament acting alone or with the support of the people expressed in a referendum - enjoys complete freedom to make any law it pleases and the judges have no option but to enforce it.
If so, we could bring in laws providing that border guards were to shoot to kill anyone seeking to leave the State without official sanction (as happened in East Germany); laws enforcing the right of people to keep others in slavery and punishing those who helped slaves to escape - as applied in North America up to the latter half of the 19th century; laws permitting the torture of prisoners under interrogation (as applied nearer to home even within living memory); and laws providing for the extermination of people on racial grounds.
Mr Burke believes that I would be bound by my oath to uphold the Constitution and the laws to participate as a judge in the enforcement of such laws.
I believe, on the contrary, along with a very distinguished line of philosophers, pagan and Christian, going back to the time of Aristotle, Socrates, Sophocles and Cicero, that there is a higher law to which all man-made law must be subject, and on which it depends for its validity.
This principle (which applies whether we have any Constitution or none) is given express recognition by the Irish Constitution when it recites that all authority to make laws derives from the Blessed Trinity; that the law-making power derives "under God" from the people; and when it speaks of "inalienable and imprescriptible rights antecedent and superior to all positive law".
It cannot be left to the individual judge, or bench of judges, to determine what laws are inconsistent with the moral law and therefore invalid, since they may have no experience or training in moral philosophy, or any expertise in determining the content of the moral law.
Catholics - and there are close on 1,000 million of them worldwide - are bound to accept the teaching of the Magisterium of the Church on questions of faith and morals. Over 90 per cent of our people profess allegiance to this Church. Why should the judges not listen with respect to the teaching of that Church when a possible conflict arises between the laws we enact and the moral law?
Remember that King Baudouin of Belgium abdicated the throne rather than give the royal consent to a law facilitating abortion. This outstanding example was, unhappily, rejected out of hand in recent years by our legislators, our President, our judges, and by many of our people who voted in the referendum in 1992. They have been tried and found wanting. - Yours, etc.,
Kilternan, Co. Dublin.