Friday, June 13, 2008
Should Catholic legal theory have more to say?
This is the time of year when I confess to feeling some blawg envy. Most blawgs are scrambling to offer immediate and insightful commentary on the Supreme Court decisions as they're handed down, as happened today with Boumediene v. Bush. At MoJ, we tend not to have much to say, for the understandable reason that Catholic legal theory, whatever value it has in some contexts, is wildly indeterminate when it comes to analyzing judicial decisions that do not directly implicate natural law principles (e.g., abortion, marriage, parental rights). In analyzing a case like Boumediene, we can (and should, in my view) point out that any meaningful conception of human dignity compels us to provide fair and effective procedures to detainees, but that might prompt the retort, "Yes, but you can't apply CST principles directly to court rulings as you might with legislative or executive actions." There always seems to be a "limited role of the judiciary" defense available, and there does not seem to be a Catholic theory of constitutional interpretation (at least not yet).
So is this what keeps MoJ from weighing in as part of the annual Supreme Court festival of armchair judging? Does Catholic legal theory have anything distinctive to say about Boumediene?
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2008/06/should-catholic.html