In this AirMaria.com interview, Archbishop Raymond Burke, prefect of the Vatican’s Apostolic Signatura, discusses the principles that should underlie any sound system of law.

The Apostolic Signatura is the Vatican’s highest court. Archbishop Burke, formerly the archbishop of St. Louis, has served as its prefect since being appointed to the post last year by Pope Benedict XVI.

According to Archbishop Burke, the relativistic contemporary conception of law, which rejects impartial and consistent standards of judgment that apply equally to all people in all circumstances, isn’t really justice at all. Instead, this sort of “law” becomes simply a vehicle through which those who hold political and social power arbitrarily impose their will on those who are disempowered.

“It’s simply the tyranny of those who have power,” Archbishop Burke says in the interview. “We see this, for instance, in proposals to eliminate elderly people because they’re too costly for society, or we want the elimination, or killing we should say to be more precise, of infants in the womb because they’re inconvenient for people.”