A Response to Johan D. van Der Vyver's "the Jurisprudential Legacy of Abraham Kuyper and Leo XIII"‪.‬

Johan van der Vyver provides a masterful survey of prospective philosophical bases for human rights, concluding that the Kuyperian paradigm of sphere sovereignty is "a particularly appealing alternative for addressing the plight of disadvantaged or suppressed sections of the population, cut[s] the range of governmental competencies ... down to size, and charge[s] the repositories of governmental powers to honor the codes of international law" to protect human rights. His extension of Abraham Kuyper's sphere sovereignty as a levee against statist encroachment into spheres in which the State has no jurisdiction is as welcome as it is beneficial. Throughout his analysis, he seeks to avoid the Scylla of positivism and the Charybdis of majoritarianism. Intent on avoiding the extremes of various forms of reductionism, he also subjects natural-law theory to appropriate criticism. He finds both Kuyperian sphere sovereignty and Leo XIII's subsidiarity to be conceptually helpful, but sees superior explanatory force in the Kuyperian approach.