Dignity in the classroom

Regarding the question of how to pursue questions of Catholic social thought in the law classroom, I should have mentioned my current effort earlier this semester.  I am for the first time teaching a seminar titled "The Metaphysics and Jurisdiction of Sovereignty."  Over nearly ten years of teaching Federal Courts I discovered more and more deeply the (obvious) fact that through doctrines of sovereign immunity exceedingly profound questions are being asked and answered in quotidian rules of jurisdiction and suability.  And the Court is today re-writing those rules and thus giving those questions new answers.  Those new answers include (to me) startling claims on behalf of the "dignity," even the sovereign dignity," of the states.  The Federal Courts course did not provide a proper forum for tracing and probing the political science, history, theology, and philosophy that are at work here (or should be at work).  The new seminar allows students to see how -- pace the rhetoric one sometimes hears-- even "mere" rules of jurisdiction and suability have deep theoretical content and philosophically challengeable consequences.  The readings include the leading S.Ct. cases in sovereign immunity and the 11th amendment, and these span more than two centuries.  Other decisions of the Court bearing on sov. imm. are also included; e.g., Ex parte Young.  The secondary sources include Bodin, Hobbes, the Federalist, James Wilson, O. v. Gierke, J. Maritain, H. Laski, W.J. Stankiewicz, Judge Noonan, C. Pierson, E. Young, R. Fallon, A. Althouse, P. Kahn, J. Resnik, and S. Sherry.  The bringing together of such varied perspectives on the relations among rights, remedies, and "the state" (a "public service corporation" (Laski) or an entity possessed of "sovereign dignity" (SCOTUS)) has so far proved productive of very engaged discussion.  Claims of dignity get and sustain attention -- which, of course, is the Court's point, and mine too.  We'll see how the rest of the semester goes.