MOJ readers are familiar (I hope!) with the important new book by Nicole Garnett and Margaret Brinig, "Lost Classroom, Lost Community: Catholic Schools' Importance in Urban America" (U. Chicago Press). The book was reviewed, here, by Michael Sean Winters, and here by George Weigel.
If you are in or near Washington, D.C. or Philadelphia, I'd encourage you to attend an upcoming event (one in each town) that the University of Notre Dame is hosting for Garnett and Brinig and learn more about the book and their research. For the September 18 event in Philadelphia, go here. For the Sept. 17 event in Washington, D.C., go here.
Here's more from the blurbage:
In the past two decades in the United States, more than 1,800 Catholic elementary and secondary schools have closed, and more than 4,500 charter schools—public schools that are often privately operated and freed from certain regulations—have opened, many in urban areas. With a particular emphasis on Catholic school closures, Lost Classroom, Lost Community examines the implications of these dramatic shifts in the urban educational landscape. (See the full press release)
More than just educational institutions, Catholic schools promote the development of social capital—the social networks and mutual trust that form the foundation of safe and cohesive communities. Drawing on data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods and crime reports collected at the police beat or census tract level in Chicago, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, Margaret F. Brinig and Nicole Stelle Garnett demonstrate that the loss of Catholic schools triggers disorder, crime, and an overall decline in community cohesiveness, and suggest that new charter schools fail to fill the gaps left behind.
This book shows that the closing of Catholic schools harms the very communities they were created to bring together and serve, and it will have vital implications for both education and policy debates.
Key Data from the Book
- Catholic school closures in Chicago between 1984 and 1994 predicted substantial between-neighborhood variance in the levels of social cohesion and disorder in 1995. Using data obtained from a survey conducted by the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods in 1995, the authors show that residents of neighborhoods where Catholic schools closed had less cohesive and more disorderly communities than residents of neighborhoods with open Catholic schools.
- While serious crime declined across the city of Chicago between 1999-2005, it declined more slowly in police beats where Catholic schools closed. In contrast to the city-wide average of a 25 percent decline, serious crime fell by only 17 percent in police beats experiencing a school closures.
- Between 1999 and 2005, the presence of an open Catholic school in a police beat was consistently associated with a statistically significant decrease in crime. Although the percentage difference varied by year, the crime rate in police beats with Catholic schools was, on average, at least 33 percent lower than in police beats without them.
Thursday, September 4, 2014
I think I've mentioned here at MOJ -- if not, I should have! -- my colleague Christian Smith's new book, "The Sacred Project of American Sociology." (It's excellent.) Here is an essay in The American Conservative by another colleague, Patrick Deneen, of Smith's book (as well as Jody Bottum's An Anxious Age . . . two for the price of one!). Here's a taste:
. . . In a word, both books are stories about the “sacred” nature of what we often call “secularism.” Bottum speaks of the decline of Mainline Protestantism and its replacement by the “Post-Protestant” denizens of academe, journalism, entertainment, business, most Protestant religious outside Evangelicalism, many liberal-leaning Catholics and non-Christians, and broad swaths of “non-elites” who have been shaped by these many leaders of culture and opinion. Smith writes of one segment of this population—sociologists—who are the embodiment of what Bottum calls the Post-Protestant “poster-children.” They are what we typically call “secular.” Both these books call into question the purported a-religiosity of this “secularism,” but rather point to the specifically sectarian nature of this particular form of “secularity”—not so much “Post-Protestant,” as Bottum describes, but Protestant after God.
What struck me through my juxtaposed reading of these two books is that they together tell the story of where Protestantism went and what Protestantism became when it ceased to be a “religion.” . . .
I really enjoyed Steve Smith's review of Ronald Dworkin's, Religion Without God. In the review, Steve "argues that Dworkin misunderstands the way theists typically think God relates to 'morality' [and] essay sketches a subjectivist (or 'super-subjectivist') account of morality that arguably better fits the understanding of believers in the biblical tradition than does Dworkin’s more objectivist account." Check it out.
I've posted a new paper, Constitutional Contraction: Religion and the Roberts Court. Here's the abstract:
This essay argues that the most salient feature to emerge in the first decade of the Roberts Court’s law and religion jurisprudence is the contraction of the constitutional law of religious freedom. It illustrates that contraction in three ways.
First, contraction of judicial review. Only once has the Roberts Court exercised the power of judicial review to strike down federal, state, or local legislation, policies, or practices on the ground that they violate the Free Exercise or Establishment Clauses. In this constitutional context the Court has been nearly uniformly deferential to government laws and policies. That distinguishes it from its two predecessors—the Rehnquist and Burger Courts—both of which exercised judicial review more regularly.
Second, contraction in the range of voting patterns. The votes of the Justices in law and religion cases overwhelmingly are either unanimous or split 5-4, with relatively few separate dissents or concurrences expressing distinctive approaches, and with the split correlating with partisan political or ideological divisions. The “liberal” and “conservative” wings vote in bloc, and frequently reason in bloc as well. This again contrasts with the voting patterns of prior Courts in religious freedom cases.
Third, contraction in coverage. As a substantive matter, the Court is narrowing the religion clauses. Every member of the Court seems now to accept that Employment Division v. Smith properly interpreted the Free Exercise Clause. Matters are more complicated for the Establishment Clause, where there is far greater division among the Justices. Nevertheless, the essay claims that the Court is moving in a variety of ways toward a narrow interpretation of the Establishment Clause as well.
Whether the Roberts Court’s contraction of the religion clauses, and its general preference for narrow readings of both, are positive developments will depend on one’s views about fundamental questions of constitutional interpretation. Yet there is a conceptual unity to the Court’s approach—logical and complementary, even if not inevitable: just as the Rehnquist Court narrowed the scope of constitutional protection for free exercise, so, too, is the Roberts Court narrowing the scope of constitutional prohibition under the Establishment Clause. In this corner of constitutional law, the Court is gradually withdrawing from the scene.
Comments are welcome!
Wednesday, September 3, 2014
Reading through Judge Feldman's opinion granting summary judgment to Louisiana in a challenge to its marriage definition brought by same-sex plaintiffs, I noticed that some of the authorities he quoted were somewhat atypical for a federal district court decision. These authorities were about what one might call constitutional judicialism, which is a collection of ideas about what it means to be a good judge in deciding questions of constitutional law.
In explaining his refusal to identify a new suspect class that would require departing from rational basis review under the Equal Protection Clause, Judge Feldman quotes excerpts from Justice Powell's dissent from the Court's holding in Furman v. Georgia that capital punishment violated the Eighth Amendment. At other places in the opinion, Judge Feldman quotes the dissents of Judge Kelly (Tenth Circuit) and Judge Niemeyer (Fourth Circuit) from decisions holding unconstitutional state definitions of marriage to require a man and a woman. In an extended footnote, Judge Feldman also commends Judge Holmes (Tenth Circuit) for his "very careful" opinion concurring in a decision holding Utah's marriage definition unconstitutional. That opinion commended the district court in the Utah case for refusing to attribute Utah's definition of marriage to animus.
Although Judge Feldman's reliance on these authorities is atypical, that is because cases that turn on the proper understanding of the federal judicial role in constitutional cases are themselves atypical ... at least outside of the Supreme Court. Whether typical or not, this explicit discussion about what counts as good and bad judging in constitutional cases is entirely appropriate for cases of this sort.
Ryan Anderson on today's federal court ruling upholding Louisiana's constitutional authority to define marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife:
http://dailysignal.com/2014/09/03/federal-judge-u-s-constitution-doesnt-require-redefinition-marriage/
I have posted several videos of the presentations at the conference in Rome this summer co-sponsored by the Center for Law and Religion at St. John's. The title of the conference was "International Religious Freedom and the Global Clash of Values." Tom Farr delivered the keynote address, and we had panels on The Politics of International Religious Freedom (Pasquale Annicchino, Heiner Bielefeldt, and Ambassador Ken Hackett), Comparative Perspectives on International Religious Freedom (Francisca Pérez-Madrid, Marco Ventura, and Roberto Zaccaria), and Christian and Muslim Perspectives on International Religious Freedom (Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im, Olivier Roy, and Nina Shea).
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
A very generous review of the book in Commentary Magazine by Adam White. With the exception of the kindly words about Justice Holmes, I don't disagree with anything in it!
And for something rather different (and speaking of Holmes), here's a column from Reason (whose tagline is "Free Minds and Free Markets") about tradition whose conclusion is that "We treasure the customs and practices passed down from our ancestors. And we change them anytime we want." Judge Posner is quoted as saying, "How can tradition be a reason for anything?"
