Daniel Mark is an associate professor of political science at Villanova University. Mark has published numerous journal articles and book chapters in the fields of political science and political theology. The second recipient of the Notre Dame Press First-Time Author Award, the University of Notre Dame Press is thrilled to publish his new book, The Nature of Law: Authority, Obligation, and the Common Good (August 2024). He recently answered some of our questions about his research and writing processes.
When did you first get the idea to write this book?
Earlier in my studies, I was focused more on constitutional law. I’ve always had an interest in politics and religion, too. So originally I was looking at questions of competing claims of authority between church and state and related topics. As I delved further, I kept getting pushed back into more fundamental questions, including the grounds of claims of authority. In other words, in order to answer important questions in constitutional law, I needed to answer the legal-philosophical questions underneath them. That’s how I ended up thinking about the nature of authority and, in turn, the nature of legal authority and obligation.
Certainly these are unprecedented times in the United States, Europe, and around the world. What can readers find in your book that will resonate with them during this era?
One central point in the book is that the legitimacy or justification of law’s authority must be related to law’s orientation to the common good. In the United States, we increasingly hear about “lawfare,” and I think it’s critical for our republic that we recover the idea that law must be used to advance the common good and not weaponized for partisan ends. To be sure, this is not a new problem. “Special interests” is a slur because it suggests that the law is being bent to benefit some at the expense of others. While it surely is a bit idealistic, civics education must emphasize that our political process shouldn’t be a competition to see who takes the largest slice of the pie, but instead a competition between competing visions of the common good.
What did you learn while writing it?
There’s no way to summarize everything I learned while writing the book, but I certainly learned a lot about myself! Writing is an arduous process—at least for some of us. But I also learned a tremendous amount about how a few key writers set the tone for a half a century or more of analytical jurisprudence. The critique in my book suggests that I also learned how conceptual problems in those seminal theories repeated (or grew) downstream as later authors built their work on that flawed foundation.
In what way is the book you wrote different from the book you set out to write?
Well, I’d like to think that the book is a much better book than the one I set out to write. I’m certain it is better written, and I’m grateful to several colleagues for feedback on the writing that helped me improve. It’s also inevitable (I think) that a multiyear project is going to evolve. Some of the lines I was pursuing ultimately didn’t pan out, in my opinion, and they were removed. In other words, if a particular argument wasn’t philosophically strong enough in the end, then it got cut. I tried to hold myself to a very high standard in this regard. In that way, perhaps some of the claims are more modest than they might have been otherwise, but the other side of that coin is that the arguments that remain are, I hope, strong.
Who is the biggest influence on you and your work?
Princeton professor Robert George was my adviser through my undergraduate and graduate years and has played a larger role than anyone in my intellectual formation. His own adviser, Oxford and Notre Dame professor John Finnis, looms very large in my work in general and in the book in particular. I’m very lucky to be a beneficiary of this incredible lineage.
What is your writing schedule like?
I feel very fortunate to study and write about subjects that fascinate me, but I also love teaching. So I try to get most of my writing done on days I am not teaching because I find that teaching days are mostly consumed by preparation for class, meeting with students, and so on (as well as actual class time, of course). With several new projects in the works, though, I think I will also benefit from having a least a little bit of dedicated writing time every day in order to keep up the momentum to sustain progress on several fronts.
What advice would you give to a writer who wants to start a book?
Read everything you can on the subject as early as you can in the process.
Who would you like to read The Nature of Law and why?
Mainly my mother. Just kidding.
While it is certainly an academic book, I definitely tried very hard to make it accessible for any educated reader, and I think I am lucky that my natural writing style (possibly a function of my teaching skills) inclines me toward this. The book is mainly geared toward those interested in philosophy of law, but I believe that readers who are attuned to current debates about law in our country will appreciate the book.
What book are you currently reading?
I read lots of of things for work, but outside of work, I just read Molyvos: A Greek Village’s Heroic Response to the Global Refugee Crisis (Nebraska, 2023) by John Webb. And next up is Pride and Prejudice because, embarrassingly, I never read it.
What project are you working on next?
I have two book chapters in the works, one of which is based on a conference paper I presented at Notre Dame on some of the thought of Pope Benedict XVI related to law and justice and the other of which is more closely related to this book. After those, I hope to turn my attention to a book project on the political theory of religious freedom, but that is still in its earliest stages.