If you’re looking for information on the legislative process of the US Congress or a state’s legislature, you’ll have to look elsewhere. Nor am I about to address the question of how the authority of government derives from or is impressed on its citizenry - a mixture of social contract and fear of consequences that varies from nation to nation. The question at hand is, from where, ultimately, does law come and derive its authority?

One possible answer has found expression many times through the ages. The caprice of a Persian or Roman emperor, a Greek tyrant, an absolute monarch (e.g. Louis "I am the state" XIV of France), and a Stalin-Hitler-like dictator are all examples of "positive law". Under positive law, nothing is "right" or "wrong" except as government decides. Government is free to adjust, reverse, or apply "right" and "wrong" to suit its caprice. Law is as fixed or fluid, strong or weak as the ruler(s). Positive law is the source of law posited by atheists and agnostics who acknowledge a need for law, if only by default. Athenian-style democracy could at times function as positive law - e.g. when citizens were exiled for being too successful or influential. In positive law, law is what the ruler or government says it is. Though the concept of the "Divine right of kings" nominally acknowledges an authority superior to that of the king, the appeal to Divinity was merely a pretense to veil the fact that the king could and would do whatever he pleased, and to make questioning the actions of the monarch an act of impiety. This is positive law. Modern bureaucracy often functions as a form of positive law. Regulators are almost unaccountable. The regulations propagated need not be possible or practical; the regulations could even preclude citizens from exercising their existing legal rights. In the US, the Constitution-is-a-living-document idea has become a form of positive law, to the extent that judges use their decisions to write new laws that find their source in the judges’ minds rather than the US Constitution. Positive law is a tool well suited to power-grabbers and elitists.

Another view is "anarchy", the idea that there should be no law at all. Some people believe in anarchy because they believe laws are not necessary - man is potentially that good - and laws are a corruptive influence. Some people chafe at the idea of some one or something having authority over them. Some people advocate anarchy because they see it as a means to tear down a social system they hate, though anarchy may only be a step toward some other, very different, ultimate goal. Though some people won’t acknowledge it, the history of mankind amply shows that with no restraints or prospect of consequences to constrain them, people in society usually degenerate into violence, debauchery, and fraud. Anarchy ultimately is a rejection, and destructive, of society and civilization.

One of the philosophies underlying the founding and Constitution of the US is that of "natural law". The concept’s name explains the concept. Law is viewed as observable in or inferrable from nature. Thus, the foundation of law is, in natural law, nature itself. Nature as a standard is ambiguous and equivocal, however, as it can’t clearly answer many questions. Must mankind really live in societies? Do metaphysical concepts such as justice, mercy, truth, and fairness really derive from nature? Where are abstract ideas such as property, democracy, or liberty found in nature? The philosophy of natural law is incomplete unless it is built on two underlying assumptions - that nature was created and reflects the character and purposes of its Designer-Creator, and that these have been revealed by the Creator. Without this foundation, anyone is free to "discover" in nature anything their imagination desires and their sophistry can advocate.

As touched on above, the ultimate source and foundation of law can only be found in the Designer-Creator of the universe and His revelation of His character and purposes - revealed law. In positive law, "right" and "wrong" are flexible and arbitrary (even reversible). Anarchy rejects outright the concepts of objective, universal, "right" and "wrong". In natural law, nature by itself provides an ambiguous, equivocal, foundation for "right" and "wrong", and can be manipulated toward either positive law or anarchy. Only in revealed law can "right" and "wrong" be fixed points - murder, rape, theft, and fraud are illegal because they are wrong, and a livable society (safety, freedom, civil rights, civil responsibilities) is right. Revealed law is the other philosophy behind the founding of the US.

Does the idea of revealed law, of necessity, entail theocracy? Answering this question - a very current issue in the US - requires looking at the teachings of Theistic religions that have scriptures that purport to be Divinely revealed, the significant ones in the US being Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Ultimately, Islam calls for theocracy: governance according to Islamic law with guidance from teachers of Islam; other religions are to be silenced, suppressed, and oppressed. When not in control in a nation, Muslims are instructed to live within that nation’s laws, while working to persuade people to convert to Islam. Their purpose is to become the majority religion and bring the nation under Islamic law. The Law of Moses, which Judaism recognizes as scripture, set up the nation of Israel (~3500 years ago, not modern Israel) to be a theocracy. While this theocracy was interrupted and incomplete at times through the centuries, its final end came with the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70AD, and the suppression of the Bar Kochba Rebellion and the deportation of Jews from Judea in 135AD. Since then, Jewish people have scattered all over the world, and their religion became more focused on the ceremonial (things that could be done without priests and the temple) and ethical aspects of the Law of Moses. While Judaism has a special status in modern Israel, the nation is not a theocracy - atheists, agnostics, and members of other religions are free to participate in Israeli society and government.

While Christianity includes the Law of Moses and the rest of the Jewish scriptures in the Bible, setting up a theocratic government based on the Law of Moses is not mainstream Christian teaching. While there have been times - e.g. Medieval Europe and 17th Century Puritan New England - when some aspects of theocracy were in place, Christians have largely recognized both that this is not what the New Testament teaches, and that organizationally entangling church and state harmed both and often oppressed the citizenry. At the same time, Christians do recognize many moral principles in the Bible which are both in accord with God’s character and conducive to a smoothly functioning, livable, happy, society. Christians work within the societies in which they live to move their nations toward those principles as being beneficial to those nations’ ways of life, but not to codify scripture as law or to set up religious leaders as overseers in the legal and governing processes. Since leading people into relationship with God is, in Christian teaching, a matter of intellectual and spiritual persuasion and belief, using law to coerce church membership contradicts Christianity - coerced people are not persuaded, nor do they believe - and is harmful to the church as well as to those who have been coerced.

Human societies will always experience a certain amount of intellectual and moral turmoil. The concepts of revealed law and natural law, working in tandem, can limit the harm this turmoil can cause and channel some of its energy to improve society. However, as long as humans are imperfect, ambitious people will attempt to manipulate, corrupt, or ignore any philosophy of law to gain power, wealth, and bring about tyranny and oppression.