Unjust Law qua Law, contra lex injusta non est lex

I wrote this on 22 December 2013 at 12:15am. I am not sure I still agree with it—mostly because of the inclusion of analogical predication which I now view as a metaphysically weak absurdity—and I'm also not entirely sure Thomists would actually deny "law" analogically so predicated of "unjust law", but here we go:

Thomists would say that an unjust “law” is not a law at all since it cannot morally bind the conscience. But we still refer to this as a law, since we call it an unjust law. “Law” is predicated analogically of “unjust law,” but analogical predication acknowledges some similarity in distinct essences.
 

Law primarily binds in the conscience of the rational persons for whom it has been promulgated, since law expresses a rational ordinance and intention of the legislator and the rational binds the rational. But law binds the entire human person, and since man is a composite of body and soul, the law must also bind the body. It is the bodily binding element which an unjust law binds, since those who enforce the law will often continue to enforce unjust laws and inflict bodily punishments upon those who disobey them.
 

An unjust law has the analogically predicated denotation “law” insofar as such ordinance meets the formal requirements set by the legislator for a law to obtain binding force. This is a formal law which has formally binding force. A formal law can be just or unjust, since both kinds are able to meet the formal requirements for an ordinance to be “law.”
 

It is therefore unfitting to say that a formal law, although unjust, is altogether “not a law at all.” Insofar as it meets the requirements set by a validly constituted legislator for legislative status the word “law” can be predicated of it, although analogically, and insofar as “law” can be predicated analogically of an unjust formal law it is a law, although not in the unqualified sense nor in the sense that a just formal law is a law.