(champions: Thomas Aquinas, John Finnis, Lon Fuller) argues that law is not merely about power and procedures. To be genuine law, a rule must align with basic principles of justice, reason, and human flourishing. An utterly depraved or irrational rule (e.g., a law ordering the murder of innocents) is not truly law; it is a "corruption of law." For the natural lawyer, fidelity is fidelity to reason and justice . A judge who blindly applies an unjust statute is not being faithful to law; they are being faithful to power, thereby abandoning the very purpose of law.
Nowhere is the meaning of fidelity to law more contested than in constitutional interpretation. What does it mean to be faithful to a centuries-old constitution? The answer divides originalists, living constitutionalists, and a host of intermediate positions.
Not retroactive (not punishing past actions that were legal when done). Possible for people to actually obey. ⚖️ The Famous Hart-Fuller Debate
But originalism faces a formidable difficulty. Many of the most fundamental provisions of the Constitution state their requirements in broad, vague language — "due process of law," "equal protection of the laws," "cruel and unusual punishments." Fidelity to the original language cannot generate the specific results that originalists desire. A judge committed to originalism must still make moral and political judgments about how those broad principles apply to novel circumstances.
This article explores the meaning of fidelity to law from multiple angles: its philosophical foundations, its role in constitutional interpretation, its implications for judicial practice and legal ethics, and the contemporary challenges that threaten to undermine it.
A judge’s fidelity is to the constitution, statutes, and precedent. They must set aside personal politics. Judicial oaths explicitly require "equal justice under law" without respect to persons.
Fidelity to law is a legal and philosophical principle that describes the moral obligation
The legal theorist Matthew Kramer, building on Fuller's work, argues that Fuller's eight standards of legality — generality, promulgation, prospectivity, clarity, non-contradiction, possibility of obedience, constancy, and congruence between official action and declared rule — articulate the core of the rule of law. These standards are internal to law and, taken together, constitute a "morally cherishable" ideal. But Kramer parts company with Fuller in insisting that the respect in which these standards are internal to law is not the respect in which they speak the language of moral ideals.
Positivism’s fidelity is thin. It cannot explain why most people feel a moral duty to obey unjust laws, nor can it guide a judge when two valid rules conflict.
