For any MOJ readers in the New York area: Thursday evening, Feb. 15, is the second part of Fordham Law School's Catholic Lawyer's Program on Faithful Citizenship, "a three-part series to explore the legal, ethical, and cultural implications of bringing Catholic values and social teaching into public life." Tomorrow nights topic is: When Conscience Clashes with State Law & Policy: Catholic Institutions. The speaker is, yours truly, and Piero Tozzi, Esq., of Winston & Strawn will respond to my talk. The program will take place in Room 430 B&C at Fordham Law School, 140 West 62nd Street. and will run from 6:00-7:45, with a reception to follow. Join us for what I'm sure will be a good discussion.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Faithful Citizenship at Fordham
Monday, February 12, 2007
Richard Rorty Quote of the Day
I've been pondering this assertion from Rorty's Objectivity, Relativism and Truth (p 33):
Pragmatism seems to me . . . a philosophy of solidarity rather than of despair. From this point of view, Socrates' turn away from the gods, Christianity's turn from an Omnipotent Creator to the man who suffered on the Cross, and the Baconian turn from science as contemplation of eternal truth to science as instrument of social progress, can be seen as so many preparations for the act of social faith which is suggested by a Nietzschean view of truth.
As a descriptive claim that Christianity's emphasis on the humanitarian here and now prepared the ground for a more subjective view of truth, is Rorty on to something?
Happy V-Day!
No, not that V-day -- the one connected to that play -- but this one: February 11 (yesterday) was Vatican Independence Day, the day of the signing of the 1929 Lateran Pacts that made the Holy See a sovereign entity over the 168 acres of Rome now known as the Vatican City-State. I know I'll be drinking a fine Italian red to celebrate . . . .
(Thanks for the reminder to Whispers in the Loggia.)
Physicians' views on exemptions
Given the many MOJ posts on conscience clauses and conscience-based exemptions, this item from Professor Friedman's "Religion Clause" blog might be of interest:
Thursday, February 08, 2007
New Survey Of Physician Views On Conscientious Objection
Today's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine carries a special article titled Religion, Conscience, and Controversial Clinical Practices. It reports on a survey of 1144 practicing U.S. physicians regarding their views on situations in which patients request a legal medical procedure to which the physician objects on moral grounds. The study concluded that "most physicians believe that it is ethically permissible for doctors to explain their moral objections to patients (63%). Most also believe that physicians are obligated to present all options (86%) and to refer the patient to another clinician who does not object to the requested procedure (71%).... [However] many physicians do not consider themselves obligated to disclose information about or refer patients for legal but morally controversial medical procedures. Patients who want information about and access to such procedures may need to inquire proactively to determine whether their physicians would accommodate such requests." Today's Chicago Tribune reports on the study.
Happy Blogoversary, MOJ!
This blog was inaugurated on February 3, 2004, with this post:
Welcome to Mirror of Justice, a group blog created by a group of Catholic law professors interested in discovering how our Catholic perspective can inform our understanding of the law. Indeed, we ask whether the great wealth of the Catholic intellectual and moral tradition offers a basis for creating a distinctive Catholic legal theory- one distinct from both secular and other religious legal theories. Can Catholic moral theology, Catholic Social Thought and the Catholic natural law tradition offer insights that are both critical and constructive, and which can contribute to the dialogue within both the legal academy and the broader polity? In particular, we ask whether the profoundly counter-cultural elements in Catholicism offer a basis for rethinking the nature of law in our society. The phrase "Mirror of Justice" is one of the traditional appellations of Our Lady, and thus a fitting inspiration for this effort.
A few things about this blog and us:
1. The members of this blog group represent a broad spectrum of Catholic opinion, ranging from the "conservative" to the "liberal", to the extent that those terms make sense in the Catholic context. Some are politically conservative or libertarian, others are on the left politically. Some are highly orthodox on religious matters, some are in a more questioning relationship with the Magisterium on some issues, and with a broad view of the legitimate range of dissent within the Church. Some of us are "Commonweal Catholics"; others read and publish in First Things or Crisis. We are likely to disagree with each other as often as we agree. For more info about us, see the bios linked in the sidebar.
2. We all believe that faith-based discourse is entirely legitimate in the academy and in the public square, and that religious values need not be bracketed in academic or public conversation. We may differ on how such values should be expressed or considered in those conversations or in public decisionmaking.
3. This blog will not focus primarily on the classic constitutional questions of Church and State, although some of our members are interested in those questions and may post on them from time to time. We are more interested in tackiling the larger jurisprudential questions and in discussing how Catholic thought and belief should influence the way we think about corporate law, products liability or capital punishment or any other problem in or area of the law.
4, We are resolutely ecumenical about this blog. We do not want to converse only among ourselves or with other Catholics. We are eager to hear from those of other faith traditions or with no religious beliefs at all. We will post responses (at our editorial discretion, of course.) See "Contact Us" in the sidebar.
5. While this blog will be highly focused on our main topic, we may occasionally blog on other legal/theoretical matters, or on non-legal developments in Catholicism (or on baseball, the other church to which I belong.)
6. We will be linking to relevant papers by the bloggers in the sidebar. Comments welcome!
Thanks to all MOJ bloggers and readers, past and present (and future!). We've had thousands of posts, and hundreds of thousands of hits. Obviously, we've raised far more questions than we've answered, but I like to think that we've avoided some of the narcissism and navel-gazing that can afflict blogging, and have also shown that respectful, collegial, charitable disagreement is possible and fruitful. On to year four!
Reasonable Reliance on Gov't Counsel: A New Litmus Test?
MoJ readers might be interested in Marty Lederman's speculation (based on an excerpt from Jan Crawford Greenberg's new book on the Supreme Court) about why the Bush Administration passed over Michael McConnell for a Supreme Court vacancy.
Culture War Journalism
The New York Times' public editor responds to complaints about the recent front-page story proclaiming that more than half of American women now live without a husband. The tally was made possible by counting 15 year-olds as "women living without a spouse." (A previous MoJ post on the criticism is here.) The editor concludes:
The eye-catching assertion that more women in America were living without a husband than with one obviously vaulted this article to Page One. “It is true that the 51 percent benchmark probably lifted this story onto the front page,” Jack Kadden, a deputy national editor who oversaw its preparation, wrote in an e-mail. “It is certainly what caught our attention.”
It was discouraging to find yet another article with an unusual angle that didn’t seem to encounter many skeptical editors as it made its way to the front page. “At the Page One meeting there was agreement that the story was especially newsworthy because of the for-the-first-time-more-living-alone-than-with-a-spouse angle,” Jill Abramson, the managing editor for news, wrote to me in an e-mail. “No questions about the methodology or age categories were discussed.”
The road to Minneapolis . . .
Since a faculty hire as humdrum as the Dalai Lama is worth trumpeting on MoJ, I feel obliged to announce a faculty hire even more impressive: longtime MoJ-er Susan Stabile, the Dean George W. Matheson Professor of Law at St. John's, will be joining Lisa Schiltz, Greg Sisk, Tom Berg, and me on the faculty of the University of St. Thomas Law School at the close of the academic year. Needless to say, we are incredibly excited to have her on board as the St. Thomas project continues to unfold.
Today's Wedding News
The "weddings & celebrations" page of the New York Times can be a surprisingly provocative read, and today is no exception. Consider the story of Sharon Drager and Wyit Wright (HT: Volokh):
By 1996 [Dr. Drager] was divorced again. She was also lonely and began looking online for old friends. She found Mr. Wright’s e-mail address. She remembered being both “apprehensive and excited” when she began typing, “I don’t know if you remember me.”
His response came 15 minutes later. By then, he said, his home life was troubled. He was heartened “to hear from someone who you never thought you would hear from again.”
They corresponded by e-mail off and on for five years. “Every time his name popped up,” Dr. Drager felt a bolt of excitement.
After 9/11, their conversation changed. Mr. Wright, who had always thought he could fix anything, had by then concluded that his family life was irrevocably broken.
He suggested to Dr. Drager that they meet in Las Vegas the next year and go on a group river-rafting trip through the Grand Canyon. He told his wife about the trip but not about his companion.
I realize that there is often an overlap between a previous marriage and the relationship giving rise to the new marriage, but I did not realize that the overlap is now to be publicly noted (even chuckled over?) as simply another anecdotal indication of the myriad ways in which our lifelong commitments end and begin again with someone invariably more delightful than our previous partner.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Detaining Families
Critiqued family detention center opens its doors
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle
TAYLOR — Painted sunflowers bloomed on the cinderblock. Teddy bears smiled from metal bunk beds in the cells. Slides and swings adorned a small playground rimmed in razor wire.
At the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, shown to the media Friday for the first time since it opened nine months ago, images of childhood were juxtaposed against the cavern-cold feel of a former prison. It's a place where standard-issue navy detention uniforms come in infant onesies.
The Hutto Center, built as a correctional center for adults, is now one of only two facilities in the country at which immigrant parents and children seeking asylum or facing deportation are detained, at a cost of $2.8 million a month, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials who led the tour said.
"We've been historically criticized for breaking families apart," said Gary Mead, ICE assistant director for detention and removal operations in Washington, D.C. "We feel this is a humane approach for keeping families together."
After the Sept. 11 attacks, the immigration department abandoned its "catch and release" method of handling immigrant families from countries other than Mexico, largely because most immigrants failed to report to their court hearings.
Human rights groups say that Hutto, operated by the for-profit Corrections Corporation of America, is no place for children. Detainees have complained of poor food, lagging medical attention, substandard education and a sharply structured penal-like environment that Congress has specifically advised against where children are concerned. ...
For more of the article.
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