While the last and most recent of the revealed religions is generally considered to be Islam, religious scholars are gradually recognizing that a religion founded later in the modern era, the Bahā'ī Faith, displays all the characteristics of a universal religion. Whereas scholars working in the field of Islamic Studies tended in the past to treat this religion under the sub-heading “Islamic sects,” and Religious Studies scholars for many years paid little attention to it, more recent research counts the Bahā'ī Faith as one of the world religions.

The present study aims to provide an overview of the revealed law of the Bahā’ī Faith, which is of interest for students of both legal history and religious studies. We are entering virgin territory here, as no attempt has yet been made at a systematic jurisprudence, nor has a tradition of Bahā’ī jurisprudence been established that might compare with the Islamic Usūlu’l-figh. Since the foundations and principles of this law can be understood only within their theological context, and knowledge of this context is rare outside the Bahā’ī community, some basic background information about the faith will be provided first.

The headline in the October 1, 1994 edition of the San Francisco Examiner read “Law Saves Churches From Preservation.” It is not intuitively apparent that churches would want to utilize the law to be saved from historic preservation; in fact, it is at least equally logical to assume that preservation of historic churches would be a goal around which clergy and preservationists would rally. Secular preservationists, of course, may find in a given church superior formal aesthetic qualities or crucial social or historical significance. Religious leaders, for their part, may welcome historic preservation for theological reasons, so that the buildings will stand as “witnesses to faith”; others may see preservation “as part of a church's responsibility to the wider community.” Regardless of their motivations, though, there's significant potential for cooperation among preservationists and religious leaders. However, as landmark and historic district preservation has emerged as an important governmental planning and land use tool, cooperation has inevitably given way to conflict. Ultimately, issues of preservation yield to issues of authority and autonomy, that is, whether freedom of religion or preservation should prevail.

One might think about the relationship between law practice and religion in different ways, depending on how one views either the professional norms or religious belief and observance. Some of the most recent academic literature on “religious lawyering” is premised on a highly critical view of the profession's norms and a claim that religious convictions that bear on the practice of law are incompatible with, and preferable to, aspects of the professional norms. My purpose here is to identify, and raise some questions about, both this critique and this suggestion, and to show how they are in tension with other insights of the religious lawyering literature.

A conception of the relevance of religion to lawyers' work need not begin with a critical view of professional norms and professionalism. On the contrary, one might start with the premise that the legal profession's expectations for law practice are socially and morally laudable, and perceive lawyers' religious convictions as providing support for good lawyering. This was the understanding expressed by Henry A. Boardman, a Presbyterian Minister, in an 1849 oration that was surely among the earliest recorded reflections on the relevance of religion to the work of U.S. lawyers.

Getting our definitions straight is a necessary bit of throat-clearing before we get into the argument at hand. By law I mean the process that produces and sustains the formal and public rules by which we attempt to order our life together. Law is legislating, adjudicating, administering and negotiating the allocation of rights and duties, in the hope of preventing harm, resolving conflicts, and creating means of cooperation. So I am obviously speaking of law in a quite comprehensive sense.

As for transcendence, a number of other terms might be employed. We might speak of the ontological or metaphysical basis of law. Or, in the more classical tradition, we might prefer to speak of a hierarchy of goods from which law is derived and to which law is accountable. Whatever terminology we choose to employ, the point is that the law and laws are not self-legitimating. In fact, the very term “self-legitimating” is a nonsense term. Something can only be declared legitimate by reference to something else. Indeed, at the risk of seeming pedantic, it should be noted that the adjective “legitimate” is from the past participle of legitimare which means to make legitimate, and has as its first meaning to be lawfully begotten.