Jesuit Legal Education: Myth or Reality?

I would like to begin this post by thanking Mark, Rob, Amy, and Rick for their posts regarding the ARALS conference at Baylor. It is clear that all of them have something important to say about “Catholic” and “Jesuit” legal education.

I shall begin this post with two anecdotes. The first is from the Cecille B. DeMille film, “The Ten Commandments.” When rumor stirs that the Hebrews have a deliverer in their midst, Pharaoh Sethi (aka Sir Cedric Hardwicke) tells his son Prince Rameses (aka Yul Brynner) to bring back this deliverer—but he makes a qualification: if the hero is but a myth, bring him back in a bottle; but if a man, bring him back in chains. So let it be written, so let it be done.

Is Jesuit legal education a myth or not? Is it something that can be placed in a bottle and located on the shelf of a museum? Or, is it real and must be placed in chains for safe keeping? What is to be written about it? And, then, what can be done about it?

The second story is rooted in the essay co-authored by John Breen and Michael Scaperlanda “Never Get Out’a the Boat: Stenberg v. Carhart and the Future of American Law.”  In their illuminating work, John and Michael identify a crucial issue that American judges, for the most part, having been dodging since Roe v. Wade was decided over thirty-three years ago. As John and Michael state, “the Court avoids the embarrassment of such a failed argument (the truth about nascent human life, etc.) by ignoring the issue altogether.” John and Michael present the reality about nascent human life being human which many judges avoid acknowledging; therefore, they only have to deal with a myth.

And what about Jesuit legal education? Is the truth about it being ignored as well?

To put it another way: has Jesuit legal education become a myth? Or has its reality been ignored by those closely associated with it? Perhaps the better question might be this: is the reality, in fact, a myth? As I begin to address these issues in a preliminary fashion, I’ll be getting out of a boat of sorts to offer some initial thoughts.

As Rick notes, Mark is on to something quite important about the reality and the myth of Jesuit legal education. Do “tired formulae” constitute the reality that is really a myth that can be put into a bottle? What makes Jesuit legal education and, therefore, a Jesuit law school, the presumed situs of this education, distinctive from any legal education and any law school that has a clinic, offers jurisprudence courses, requires ethics, claims to be diverse, stands for justice, and prepares “people for others”? What law school of today, regardless of its affiliation, is without all these attributes? I am most grateful for the valiant work that Amy and Greg do in this name of Jesuit legal education. But, when all is said and done, what remains today about the institutions with which they are affiliated: a myth or a reality?

Will this question and those related to it be answered only when answers are supplied to underlying issues? If so, what might these issues be? Mark once again is on to something: are faculty, students, and administrators fearful of giving the Catholic and therefore the Jesuit perspective a privileged position? If there is fear of giving any position a privilege, might we scrutinize those law schools that do not claim this privileged position but, in reality, cultivate other privileged positions while at the same time denying alternative views to the privileges that they welcome? Perhaps the answer is that Jesuit is quite different from Catholic? But is that explanation an ineffective or incoherent one? I suggest that it is.

Avery Cardinal Dulles said it well some seven years ago when he talked about education that asserts to be humanistic (in the Christian sense of humanism), Catholic, and Jesuit. He elaborated at length on his understanding of what it means for a university to be an institution of higher education that claims to be humanistic and Catholic. When he spoke of it being Jesuit, he said only this: to be Jesuit is to intensify its Catholicity. And then, he sat down. Can the same be said of Jesuit legal education in the United States today?

But this leads me raise another issue. How does Cardinal Dulles’s accurate statement reflect on Jesuit legal education? Again Mark is on to something when he properly argues that the Catholic/Jesuit environment needs to be open to discussion, to ecumenical dialogue, and to diversity; however, this does not preclude or is it antithetical to a bold assertion that the institution is unapologetically Jesuit and therefore Catholic. With regard to the latter element of diversity, I have learned a great deal about that in my first year at a Pontifical university in Rome. The diversity here amongst faculty and students makes the diversity claimed by American institutions of higher education look pale in comparison. Genuine diversity goes beyond cosmetics; it goes to heart and soul and mind. The fact that a Pontifical institution is Catholic does not make it any less catholic. Its Catholicity and its catholicity are not myths; they are reality. Of course, this diversity is nurtured in an environment where the Catholic perspective is privileged. In spite of this reality, the atmosphere is accepting, non-threatening, and non-offensive. I wonder if the same can be said about those institutions in the US which claim to offer Jesuit legal education?

One final remark for this posting—this one from the Gospels of Mark (12:1-12), Matthew (21:33-46), and Luke (20:9-19): Jesus reminds us of the man who planted the vineyard, and the difficulties he faced when he sent his servants to collect his share of the harvest. They were mistreated or killed by the tenants. Finally, when the owner’s son was sent (the owner thinking the tenants would respect him), the tenants killed him, too, erroneously believing his inheritance would then be theirs. Well, the owner did not appreciate that, and then he did a little pruning in the vineyard. Today’s law faculty members are not tenants of the owner but neither are they the owners of the vineyard who have the final say about the institution. Rick points out in his response to Mark that a variety of ways exists to approach Catholic legal education. Interestingly none of the examples he cites are Jesuit. I wonder if these vineyards of the Jesuit variety might be objects for evangelical pruning about which Archbishop Miller spoke when he visited Notre Dame last October. But one should not focus solely on this as the only outcome because one needs to have the hope of Amy and Greg to which Mark refers. After all, there is always time for reform and salvation as the vineyard owner of the Gospel accounts demonstrated on several occasions—until the time runs out and one must account for his or her stewardship…

Well, another day is on the horizon, and it is time to get back into the boat.    RJA sj