What then is the role and rule of law given a plural society of overlapping identities?
The Archbishop suggests that this be seen in terms of a negative guarantee. The law gives protection against losing certain liberties and a right to demand reasons for any infringement of self-determination. He rejects the claim that this views society as a conflict between individuals (though with a timely warning about such a consequence of a rights-based culture). His deeper anti-statist pluralist social vision is then clearly stated – “the important springs of moral vision in a society will be in those areas which a systematic abstract universalism regards as ‘private’ – in religion above all, but also in custom and habit”. And so we come to that wonderful 146-word sentence: “The rule of law is thus not the enshrining of priority for the universal/abstract dimension of social existence but the establishing of a space accessible to everyone in which it is possible to affirm and defend a commitment to human dignity as such, independent of membership in any specific human community or
