Thoughts and Action—Catholic Legal Theory

 

 

I am grateful to the previous interveners who have presented some important points regarding the role of Catholic legal theory in the daily work and lives of Catholic lawyers. I intend my small contribution today to complement what has already been presented.

I include myself amongst those who have questions, even suspicion, about some legal theories. In reading particular law review essays on “legal theory,” for example, I get the impression that their authors either have given little if any consideration to the application of what they have to offer, or if they have, they could only realize in practice what their theories espouse through a radical revolution in the economic, political, and legal structures and cultural institutions in which we exist today.

However, when it comes to Catholic legal theory, or at least what I think we are attempting to accomplish in this agora, I have a different outlook. While we may not often probe the ethical issues surrounding some aspects of the conduct of lawyers, such as reconciling work done and fees charged, we nevertheless do wrestle with fundamental issues that address the essence of the human person and his nature, the relation of the individual and the societies in which the individual exists, and the proper role that law may have involving these important matters that intersect the lives of everyone.

One individual who exemplifies this synthesis of theory development and practical application is Heinrich Rommen. As I page through his The State in Catholic Thought: A Treatise in Political Philosophy and The Natural Law: A Study in Legal and Social History and Philosophy, I encounter the mind of a great Catholic layman who was, as Russell Hittinger reminds us, not a theoretician so much as a practicing lawyer writing “in response to a political and legal crisis.” The crises of our day are different from those of the time in which Dr. Rommen wrote these remarkable and insightful texts. Nonetheless, I think that the contributors to the Mirror of Justice expend our humble efforts as Catholics to think about and write on what we understand to be the role of law in responding to the predicaments of the present age.

 

RJA sj