During the past week, the new Attorney General of the Commonwealth
of
Massachusetts
, Martha Coakley, was the keynote speaker [speech HERE] at the 22nd annual dinner of the Massachusetts Lesbian and Gay Bar Association. Her office issued a press release [HERE] that confirmed her disposition to challenge the constitution of the Commonwealth that she solemnly swore she would support when she professed the oath of office required of her under Article VI of the Massachusetts
constitution. Incidentally, the oath states: “I, A.B., do solemnly sear, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Commonwealth
of
Massachusetts
, and will support the constitution thereof. So help me God.” To assure her audience of her position, General Coakley stated in her address: “I think we can easily anticipate that if the proposed amendment was [sic] successful, there would be protracted, hard-fought litigation about the constitutionality of such a provision. If that battle is necessary, you have my support.”
This is a remarkable claim. Assuming that the constitutional provisions for amending the constitution are followed (and there is no credible evidence to the contrary), the marriage amendment that General Coakley opposes would be part of the constitution, the document she swore she would uphold. While she confirmed in her speech that she is “charged with the responsibility for upholding the law,” she unambiguously indicated that there are certain laws, namely a constitutional amendment with which she disagrees, that she will not uphold—in fact, she will defy it through litigation. This proposed course of action would lead her to violate her sworn oath. Moreover, this defiance of the constitution would derogate the rule of law. In support of her argument, she referred to dicta of two of the justices of the Supreme Judicial Court who opined in the Goodridge case that the decision to recognize same-sex marriage “may be irreversible because of its holding that no rational basis exists, or can be advanced, to support the definition of marriage proposed by the initiative…” (The italics are mine.) But what if this assertion in Goodridg is wrong and there is a rational basis supporting the definition of marriage as the exclusive union of one man and one woman? Court majorities have been wrong in the past, and there is no reason to conclude, in spite of General Coakley’s assertion, that Goodridge is irreversible considering this context.
General Coakley provides the interested citizen with further insight into her jurisprudential views in her commentary that “hard won protection of civil rights can never be taken for granted.” In elaboration of her point, she referred to the recent decision in Gonzales v. Carhart as “a challenge to choice rights ensured under Roe v. Wade.” But what if Roe is wrong? A mistaken decision cannot ensure the prolongation of error that the rule of law must oppose. It would appear that for General Coakley there are only certain understandings about the law that she is sworn to uphold. It would also seem that other understandings about the law that are unacceptable to her may be surrendered without compromising the integrity of the rule of law.
The Boston
Globe’s Megan Woolhouse reported on General Coakley’s speech in its May 12 edition. In her article [HERE], Ms. Woolhouse quoted on several occasions a law professor at Boston
College
Law
School
who thought that General Coakley’s remarks were “wonderful.” Ms. Woolhouse noted that this professor somehow relied on Boston
College
Law
School
’s being “rooted in Catholic Jesuit tradition” to support and justify his position supportive of General Coakley. As a Catholic and Jesuit, I cannot endorse the Catholic-Jesuit connection that the professor who was quoted attempted to make. Moreover, I think he joins General Coakley in the pursuit of goal that does little to enhance the rule of law but does much to destabilize it. Her approach to the law reflects the caprice of the positivist mind rather than the transcendent and objective moral order essential to Catholic legal theory. RJA sj
Here are two students' comments on the "Law and Catholic Social Thought" seminar that I just wrapped up.
For years, I've been struggling with how to deal with my Catholicism in my professional life, and my profession in my spiritual life. I was so pleased that the course gave me a chance to think through some tough issues, hear what scholars in both legal and religious studies fields had to say on the subject, and think about the kind of lawyer I want to be beyond 'litigation or corporate'. I guess classes of Professor Garnett's sort are more standard fare at colleges and law schools with religious bents, but I was pleasantly suprised to be able to really *study* this subject with the seriousness it deserves, along side my other UChicago 'standard fare' classes. . . . I hope that all students, regardless of religious persuasion or personal spirituality, may come to see our profession as a 'calling' or 'vocation,' rather than a mere job or career.
And:
Professor Garnett's "Law and the Catholic Social Tradition" course was a profound challenge. It demanded a unique combination of humility and assertiveness -- assertiveness in arguing for one's own application of Catholic Social Teaching to a particular problem or concern, humility in trying to form and promote that answer in a faithful, faith-filled manner. The class was largely comprised of Catholic students, which made painfully obvious the catechetical shortcomings of family faith formation, CCD and Catholic schooling. So often the answers to the more subtle questions we were trying to answer remained virtually impenetrable because of a missing baseline level of knowledge . . . . The discussion, too, was inevitably tainted by years of University of Chicago-style consequentialism. But as a graduating 3L, Law and the Catholic Social Tradition provided an invaluable alternative to that prevailing ethos as my classmates and I begin law-firm life.
More to come (I hope).
A response to Lisa's interesting comment: Eddie Brock in Spiderman 3, praying to God in church to kill Peter Parker, might even have quoted one of the many "imprecatory" psalms, where the psalmist indeed asks God "to smite a particular enemy of [his]." For example, Psalm 69:20-29:
20 You know my reproach, my shame, my disgrace; before you stand all my foes. 21 Insult has broken my heart, and I am weak; I looked for compassion, but there was none, for comforters, but found none. 22 Instead they put gall in my food; for my thirst they gave me vinegar. 23 Make their own table a snare for them, a trap for their friends. 24 Make their eyes so dim they cannot see; keep their backs ever feeble. 25 Pour out your wrath upon them; let the fury of your anger overtake them. 26 Make their camp desolate, with none to dwell in their tents. 27 For they pursued the one you struck, added to the pain of the one you wounded. 28 Add that to their crimes; let them not attain to your reward. 29 Strike them from the book of the living; do not count them among the just! These psalms, like the church scene, are "theologically troubling" with their curses on others, and whether and how to pray them have been recurring questions. One of the most common answers, I think, is that the psalmist is asking not for personal vengeance, but for vindication of God's justice. And Eddie's in a very weak position to claim such justice, since it was his own deceit for which Peter publicly humiliated him (I'll keep this vague to avoid spoilers). But, in an example of what I like about the movie's moral anthropology, it also clearly paints Peter as having satisfied a vengeance lust against Eddie, as having gone over the top, and as implicated in the original competitiveness that started the whole cycle. Eddie "looked for compassion [from Peter], but there was none." (By contrast, the triumph of good at the end requires characters to give up their vengefulness and exercise compassion for each other.) The wise, and Christian, emphases are that vengeance -- personal and social -- spirals out of control so easily, and that even those who are wronged -- as Peter is by Eddie -- often mix their claim for justice with a simple desire to satisfy vengefulness (cf. Mark's recent observations about some victims in sex-abuse cases) or ego.
And all the sticky, crawly black stuff is awesome.
Tom
