Here's a post I did, the day after Blessed Pope John Paul II's death, back in April of 2005:
I'm sure that many of us are reflecting on the effect that the Holy Father had on our faith and lives, and thanking God for the gift of his ministry and example. It also makes sense, here on MOJ, for us to consider what the Pope's work and thought might mean for law and legal theory. A few thoughts:
First, many of the Pope's writings focus on the importance of culture as the arena in which human persons live, thrive, and search for truth. His was not a reductionist Christianity -- one in which the choices and hopes of persons drop out of the analysis, and are replaced merely by one "dialectic" or another. Nor is Christianity merely a matter of a rightly ordered interior life. We are precious and particular, bearing the "weight of glory," but also social, relational, political -- and cultural. And, he recognized, law both shapes and is shaped by culture.
Second, the Pope returned again and again to the theme of freedom. Certainly, for lawyers -- and particularly for lawyers living and working in our constitutional democracy -- questions about the extent to which law can and should liberate (and, perhaps, liberate-by-restraining?) are appropriately on the front burner. It's fair to say that John Paul II proposed an understanding of freedom -- and of its connection with (T)ruth -- that contrasts instructively with the more libertarian, self-centered understanding that seems ascendant in our law (particularly our constitutional law) today.
Third, I imagine we will be working out for decades the implications of the Pope's proposal that the God-given dignity of the human person, and the norm of love, richly understood, should occupy center-stage in our conversations about morality -- rather than utilitarian calculations, historical movements, or supposed categorical imperatives. This proposal seems particularly powerful when it comes to the matter of religious freedom.
Finally, there is the (perhaps, at first) surprising fact that, at the end of the 20th Century, it was a mystical Pope who "stepped up" and reminded a world that had been distracted, or perhaps chastened, by reason's failures, and had embraced a excessively modest, post-modern skepticism, of the dignity and proper ends (without overlooking the limits) of reason.
There's a lot more to say, of course. I would, for what it's worth, encourage any MOJ readers who work with or advise law journals to consider commissioning essays, or even symposia, on John Paul II's jurisprudential legacy.
Rick
If you're in or near the Twin Cities tonight, stop by the University of St. Thomas, where Abdulwahid Qalinle and I will be
discussing the dangers posed by the anti-Sharia laws that keep popping up in state legislatures around the country.
Yesterday, October 22 (also my wedding anniversary!), was the feast day for Blessed Pope John Paul II. What a gift to the Church and an inspiration to the world! Go re-read, if it's been awhile, his Redemptor Hominis.
Michael Winters of the National Catholic Reporter doesn't take kindly to my recent post poking fun at him and Grant Gallicho of Commonweal for their aggressively partisan efforts to smear Paul Ryan as a Randian enemy of Catholic social thought. No surprise there. I was surprised, however, to find him claiming that he had "never called Paul Ryan a Randian." See here: http://ncronline.org/blogs/distinctly-catholic/professor-georges-tantrum#disqus_thread. ("First, I have never called Paul Ryan a Randian. I have said that Ryan called himself a Randian.")
It was less than five weeks ago that Winters was calling Ryan precisely what he now says he never called him. In this September 19th post he calls Ryan a Randian in the very title, and describes him as a Randian in the text following it: http://ncronline.org/blogs/distinctly-catholic/wow-ryan-randian-full-throttle
Title: WOW: Ryan the Randian at Full Throttle
Text: "Ryan shows just how ideologically motivated he is. And his ideology is not Thomistic, it is Randian."
Typical.
(Tip of the hat to Mike Fragoso for noticing and pointing this out.)
Monday, October 22, 2012
Robert Bork’s nomination to the US Supreme Court was rejected by the Senate 25 years ago tomorrow, October 23. As it happens, I was on the floor of the Senate during the debate on Bork’s nomination and the vote--I spent my junior year of high school as the chief Republican page in the Senate. A mild-mannered moderate Republican senator remarked privately after the vote that Washington would never be the same, a point New York Times columnist Joe Nocera made (“The Ugliness Started with Bork”) last year. Adam White has a thoughtful and provocative essay at Commentary going over the history of the nomination and its legacy in constitutional law. As then-Professor Elena Kagan observed in her 1995 review in the University of Chicago Law Review of Stephen Carter’s The Confirmation Mess:
The Bork hearings presented to the public a serious discussion of the meaning of the Constitution, the role of the Court, and the views of the nominee; that discussion at once educated the public and allowed it to determine whether the nominee would move the Court in the proper direction. Subsequent hearings have presented to the public a vapid and hollow charade, in which repetition of platitudes has replaced discussion of viewpoints and personal anecdotes have supplanted legal analysis. Such hearings serve little educative function, except perhaps to reinforce lessons of cynicism that citizens often glean from government. Neither can such hearings contribute toward an evaluation of the Court and a determination whether the nominee would make it a better or worse institution. A process so empty may seem ever so tidy--muted, polite, and restrained--but all that good order comes at great cost.
Warm congratulations to Rob for his new book, Martin Luther King Jr. and the Morality of Legal
Practice: Lessons in Love and Justice, to be published by Cambridge University Press next month. Rob's work at the intersection of religion, morality, and legal ethics has represented a unique and important contribution to the field over the years, and this book (whose introduction I remember seeing a few years back) promises more of the same. Here's the abstract:
This book seeks to reframe our understanding of the lawyer's work by exploring how Martin Luther King Jr. built his advocacy on a coherent set of moral claims regarding the demands of love and justice in light of human nature. King never shirked from staking out challenging claims of moral truth, even while remaining open to working with those who rejected those truths. His example should inspire the legal profession as a reminder that truth-telling, even in a society that often appears morally balkanized, has the capacity to move hearts and minds. At the same time, his example should give the profession pause, for King's success would have been impossible absent his substantive views about human nature and the ends of justice. This book is an effort to reframe our conception of morality's relevance to professionalism through the lens provided by the public and prophetic advocacy of Dr. King.
Our own Rick Garnett had a
review over the weekend in the
Wall Street Journal of
this new biography by journalist John Jenkins of Chief Justice Rehnquist. Like Eric Posner's
review in the
New Republic, Rick doesn't pull any punches about the shortcomings of the book. What Jenkins entirely misses is that Rehnquist was a brilliant Oakeshottian conservative pragmatist on the Court who, whether you regard him fondly or not, deserves a better judicial and intellectual biography.
