Breen and Uelmen on Catholic Legal Education

I want to commend to everyone who cares about the subject the article on Catholic legal education by our co-blogista, John Breen, that he blogged recently and posted under his name in the sidebar. He demolishes the claim that Catholic schools are effectively Catholic (or Jesuit) because they offer clinics or teach jurisprudence. He is equally devastating on the argument that law schools should not hire for mission. John shows clearly that the vast majority of Catholic law schools are not engaged with the Catholic (or Jesuit) intellectual and moral traditions in any serious way. An important, if depressing article.

I also wanted to comment briefly on Amy Uelmen's characteristically thoughtful post on this topic in which she responded to some previous posts. She argued that a Catholic law school must be characterized by an openness to other ways of thought and belief. I could not agree more; such openness is the characteristic of what I have been calling for years now the "inclusive", non-sectarian Catholic law school. The irony, however, is that in the real world of Catholic legal education there is no problem with openness to other (ie, non-Catholic, non-religious) ways of thought and belief; it is openness to Catholic ways of thought and belief that is lacking. I consider myself very lucky that my colleagues at Villanova have shown themselves extraordinarily willing to create a space for Catholic and other faith-based discourse in our intellectual community.

-Mark