Those about to enter law school may be interested in the documentary film, "The Trials of Law School," which follows several students through their first year of law school at the University of Oklahoma College of Law. The film was made by OU law grad Porter Heath Morgan. A trailer for the film is available on the Wall Street Journal's Law Blog, here.
Friday, August 10, 2007
Tort-a-licious: The Trials of Law School
The Trials of Ave Maria School of Law
More on Ave Maria School of Law by Amir Efrati on the Law Blog at the Wall Street Journal. Read here.
Thursday, August 9, 2007
"Purge at Ave Maria"
"Purge at Ave Maria Law?", asks Inside Higher Ed:
[I]n recent years, the fighting at Ave Maria law hasn’t been about cutting edge Catholic legal thought, or pitting the law school against secular competitors. Instead, the professors — many of them people who share the philosophy behind the law school — have been in revolt over what they see as the dean’s efforts to squelch them.
A recent push by the administration to fire a tenured professor at the law school — one of the professors who created the original proposal to build Ave Maria — has other professors deeply concerned. Many at the law school are afraid to speak publicly, saying that they believe the professor threatened with dismissal is being punished for objecting to some of the dean’s decisions. But privately professors say that they fear the law school has lost its values and a growing number of Catholic legal thinkers are going public calling for radical change at the law school. . . .
Regardless of their views on moving to Florida, they said that the crisis facing the law school has to do with squelching of dissent and a very narrow view of authority and Catholic thinking. “Tom Monaghan and Dobranski view Catholicism as co-existing with the right wing of the Republican party, which means a 1920s-era, free market capitalism, exploitation of workers and employees, abuse of employees and their families — all is OK in the name of God, because God approves you if you are rich and powerful,” he said.
Safranek said that the law school’s leadership has abandoned not only academic freedom, but Catholic teachings about the dignity of individuals and the importance of treating one another with basic respect. “They are the ones who don’t believe what the faith has to teach,” he said. “We are really the ones trying to maintain the Catholic identity of the institution. They want it to be an offshoot of the Republican Party.”
Ugh. I would only add that it seems a bit too quick, and unfair to the Republican Party, to suggest -- as Prof. Safranek is, perhaps erroneously, quoted as suggesting -- that (what appear to be) the appalling departures at Ave Maria from the basic norms that should govern an academic community, and Ave Maria's (apparent) failure as an academic enterprise, reflect, in some sense, the school's (or Monaghan's, or Dean Dobranski's) Republican-ness. Of course, I'm not there, so I could be wrong . . . .
Mis-understanding "discrimination", again
I've objected, a number of times, on this blog to the use of the term "discrimination" to describe what it is that religious institutions do when they hire-for-mission. Sure, the word has a meaning which fits. But, in our public debate, "discrimination" is always "unjustified" or "unwarranted" or "unfair" or "prejudiced" discrimination. In my view, that which makes "discrimination" wrong is simply not present when authentically religious institutions hire-for-mission.
That said, here's an article in USA Today, "Case Involves a Collision of Rights: Calif. Doctors Accused of Using Faith to Violate Law Against Anti-Gay Bias" ("using" faith?) which asks, "When does the freedom to practice religion become discrimination?" I guess the "freedom to practice religion" never "become[s] discrimination", but put that aside. Why isn't the answer, "the freedom to practice religion necessarily involves, sometimes, what could be characterized -- but is not helpfully characterized -- as 'discrimination.'" (I realize that the case discussed in the story is not really a hiring-for-mission case, but more of a conscience-based-exemption case, of the kind Rob Vischer knows a lot more about than I do.)
Harvey Mansfield on the new "atheist tracts"
"God, they're predictable", he complains. I agree. When I read the Sam Harris, I can't help feeling like I'm back in a senior-year-of-high-school bull-session, with the kid in the Rush t-shirt who just read Ayn Rand. (If you liked, or like, Rush, please don't e-mail me to object to my reference to the Rush t-shirt. I admit it: Rush were a creative and talented band.)
Science and Politics
Jon Adler has an interesting post about "the intersection of science and public policy" and the "danger of politicizing science." In the public square these days, the charge is common that the Bush Administration (by opposing embryo-destroying medical research, etc.) is particularly guilty of "politicizing science." Among other things, Adler quotes this, from a USA Today article on the subject:
Science policy professor Daniel Sarewitz of Arizona State University in Tempe says: "I think the opportunity to use science as a political tool against Bush has been irresistible — but it is very dangerous for science, and for politics. You can expect to see similar accusations of the political use of science in the next regime." . . .
It is easy to acknowledge (it's impossible not to) that people (left and right) often maintain "policy"-related and other views in the face of "science"-based objections that the factual predicates for these views do not obtain. I gather the worry about "politicizing" science is not merely about this kind of reaction, but about a more unsettling strategy: Identifying first, using non-"scientific"-means, one's policy preferences, and then construct defenses of those preferences using apparently (but not really) "scientific" methods and conclusions (and discarding "scientific" methods and conclusions that are in tension with one's policy preferences). This seems, well, "bad", but it's not at all obvious to me that contemporary "conservatives" (if the Bush Administration is "conservative") are any more guilty of this kind of thing than anyone else.
An even deeper worry, though, might be about those who insist -- and it seems like lots of people do insist -- that all important questions *are* scientific questions, and *can* be answered through scientific methods. But, of course, even at its best, science can only supply the material to which we apply moral principles and prudential reasoning. So, when people say -- and many do -- that the "scientific" answer to the stem-cell debate (as opposed to the "sectarian") answer is the permissive one, it seems that they are missing this point.
UPDATE: Prof. Ellen Wertheimer, of the Villanova University School of Law, kindly passed on this link to the USA Today piece from which Prof. Adler quoted.
UPDATE: My colleague, Carter Snead -- a law-and-science scholar -- writes in with this:
. . . Virtually none of the hot-button issues at the intersection of science and public policy/law are "scientific questions." They are, at bottom, normative disagreements about which science (by design) has nothing to say, other than to provide clarity regarding the factual predicates of such disputes. For example, human embryology can shed light on when and how a new member of the species comes into being, but it is utterly silent on the question of what is owed to the human embryo, or how this obligation might stand in relation to other goods such as the freedom to conduct basic scientific research aimed ultimately at the relief of dread diseases or debilitating injuries. These are moral questions. And in democratic republic such as ours, they are properly understood as "political" (and perhaps, by extension, legal) questions.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Catholic Legal Theory—an anniversary reflection
Rick has mentioned the milestone of the Mirror of Justice’s anniversary and the suggestion that contributors offer some focused reflection on Catholic Legal Theory and the objectives of the MOJ project. During my three year’s of participation, I have expressed my thoughts on a number of occasions. Given the context of commemorative postings, I would like to present a few more thoughts.
Catholic Legal Theory has actually been around for quite some time. The corpus of writings by many Catholic authors—lay and clerical—spanning the centuries has often examined questions dealing with common life or, if you will, the common good and the ordered regulation of human activity.
Perhaps imperfectly but with genius sprinkled through the mixture, many of these writings by Catholic authors have provided an objective counterpoint to subjective legal theories. From Augustine to Aquinas to More to Suárez and de Vitoria to Acton to Rommen to Maritain to the many gifted writers of the present day (including George, Glendon, Finnis, Hittinger, and several MOJ contributors!), we can identify Catholic Legal Theory as a lens through which the human person, the family, society, the state, the nation, and the international community can be viewed individually and together simultaneously. The common denominator to these many Catholic perspectives (even from Catholic authors who do not necessarily define themselves as Catholic authors) is recognition that sound legal theory must simultaneously incorporate the moral, the objective, and the transcendent in the legal order. It is through this order (as opposed to one that is subjectively derived or defined) that the human person, the family, society, the state, the nation, and the international community can better understand not only independence from one another but their vital interdependence with one another. In short, I think Catholic Legal Theory is disposed to ensuring that each of these components of the exercise of human nature exists in right relationship with one another and in right relationship with the Author who made us all. Other legal theories, while interesting and even fascinating, tend to be oriented more to the posited viewpoint that cannot as easily, if at all, recognize and insist on these critical connections.
In addition, I think the Catholic Legal Theorist is not satisfied with his or her participation in this project solely as an intellectual enterprise. I will suggest that the Catholic Legal Theorist is energized by the zeal of the disciple and the call to holiness to propose—not impose—to fellow citizens and to all members of the human family the practical implementation of Catholic Legal Theory through argument based on not just reason but on right reason.
I think I’ll stop at this point and await the reflections of my fellow MOJ contributors. RJA sj
"A Wish List for a New Administration"
Looking through the Summer issue of the Yale Law Report -- and feeling, as I always do when I read the report, slow-moving and uninteresting -- I came across this "Wish List for the New Administration." (The unspoken premise of the piece, I guess, is that "the New Administration" can actually be expected to consult and respond to the list!) So: Heather Gerken suggests a "democracy index", or "ranking index for state election administration practices (For more about Heather's proposal, click here.); Michael Graetz urges the adoption of a value-added tax, which would generate the revenue necessary to fund a sweeping income-tax exemption; Bill Eskridge suggests a number of measures designed to better protect LGBT Americans from discrimination and violence, and so on.
Two of the wish-list items -- Peter Schuck's and Jack Balkin & Reva Siegel's -- caught my attention.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Muslim Footbaths
This is one of those "controversies" that completely escapes me. Still, interesting reading.
Monday, August 6, 2007
Robert George on Reiman
Robert George emailed me regarding the Reiman abstract I posted the other day, and, with his permission, I'm posting his message, which I thought readers would also find interesting (especially the forthcoming book):
I'm not sure whether you've read Jeffrey Reiman's book on abortion, but you might want to have a look at it. It is entitled Abortion and the Ways We Value Human Life. In it, Reiman is explicit about his belief not only that embryos and fetuses, but also infants, are not persons and therefore have no right to life. He allows that we may have, in most (but not all) cases, independent reasons for not killing infants (their parents tend to love them, etc.), but our reasons for not killing them, where they obtain, have nothing to do with the inherent dignity or human rights of the infants. According to Reiman, infants do not have these qualities. (Reiman recognizes, I believe, that the only way to make a principled case in favor of abortion is to bite the bullet and say that humans in the infant stage have no more dignity or rights than humans in the fetal and embryonic stages.)Now, for reasons I've stated in various places, I think that the view held by Reiman (and also by Petter Singer, Michael Tooley, Mary Ann Warren, and some others) that infants are not persons and therefore lack inherent dignity and human rights is wrong. There is no valid reason for supposing that what makes a human individual a person (i.e., a being with inherent dignity) is the immediately exercisable capacity for characteristically human mental operations (above all, the powers to engage in conceptual thinking and exercise practical deliberation and choice), as opposed to the basic natural capacity (possessed by human individuals from the embryonic stage forward) for such operations. I have made the point that the immediately exercisable capacity for mental functions is only the development of an underlying potentiality (the basic natural capacity) that the human being possesses simply by virtue of the kind of entity it is. But it is certainly my view that if one is prepared to bite the bullet and say that infants lack inherent dignity and human rights and that killing them (to harvest vital organs for transplantation, for example) is not an injustice against them, it is much easier to make a plausible case in favor of abortion and embryo-destructive research than it is for those who want to say (as most people want to say) that infanticide is the gravely unjust killing of a person in the infant stage of his or her life.Pat Lee and I criticize Reiman and the others I mentioned in a book we have coming out soon from Cambridge University Press entitled Self-Body Dualism and Contermporary Ethical and Political Controversies. Since it went to press before we had a chance to see Reiman's reply to Pat's earlier critique of his views, Pat will respond to that reply independently (probably not in a piece devoted exclusively to Reiman, but in one addressing recent efforts of various people to justify abortion and embryo-destructive research).
George also has a book (co-authored with Christopher Tollefsen) on the embryo question coming out in January with Doubleday. Both that and the Self-Body Dualism book are sure to be must-reads.
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