I am enjoying the conversations (and the scenery, and the weather, . . . ) at Pepperdine University this weekend, thanks to the hospitality of Profs. Michael Helmand and Bob Cochran, and the University's Nootbaar Institute on Law, Religion, and Ethics. Our own Amy Gelmen is about to take the podium, to talk about moral obligations of bystanders to those in danger.
This morning, I moderated an interesting panel on Criminal Law matters, at which Prof. Barbara Armacost (to mention just one presenter) shared thoughtful remarks on the phenomenon of solitary confinement. Before that, I had the honor of introducing the keynote lecture on "The Just Limits of Love" by Prof. Nicholas Wolterstorff.
Yesterday, there were two panels on the by-now familiar-to-law-folks debate about accommodations of religion and "third-party harms." I spoke, along with Profs. Fred Gedicks, Nathan Chapman, Mark Scarberry, Chad Flanders, and Doug NeJaime. A good time was had by all. In my remarks, which were directed to the recent paper published by NeJaime and Prof. Reva Siegel, I contended -- drawing on this paper, from about ten years ago -- that the mere fact an accommodation claim involves an issue that is "culture-war" salient or in "democratic contestation" does not provide a (principled) basis for denying the claim.
In the latest issue of Books & Culture, there is a review by Prof. John Witte of Samuel Moyn's new book, Christian Human Rights. Like everything Witte writes, it is well worth a read. Here's a bit:
Human rights norms ultimately need Christian or comparably sturdy religious or philosophical narratives to ground them, and to adapt and apply them to the culture of each local community. There is, of course, some value in simply declaring human rights norms of “liberty, equality, and fraternity” or “life, liberty, and property”—if for no other reason than to pose an ideal against which a person or community might measure itself, to preserve a normative totem for later generations to make real. But, ultimately, these abstract human rights ideals of the good life and the good society depend on the visions and values of human communities and institutions to give them content and coherence—to provide what Jacques Maritain called “the scale of values governing [their] exercise and concrete manifestation.” It is here that Christianity and other religions must play a vital role. Religion is an ineradicable condition of human lives and human communities. Religions invariably provide many of the sources and “scales of values” by which many persons and communities govern themselves. Religions inevitably help to define the meanings and measures of shame and regret, restraint and respect, responsibility and restitution that a human rights regime presupposes. Religions must thus be seen as indispensable allies in the modern struggle for human rights, along with many other philosophical, moral, cultural resources. To exclude them from the struggle is impossible, indeed catastrophic. To include them, by enlisting their unique resources and protecting their unique rights, is vital to enhancing the regime of human rights.
The review is appreciative, but critical (persuasively so, I think). Check it out.
What happened last week in Minnesota is the way it was supposed to be. Republicans gathered precinct by precinct in school classrooms, churches, and public libraries to talk with their neighbors. With a record-setting turnout, we Minnesotans chose Senator Marco Rubio as our candidate for President — by a rather large margin. It was a commanding win for Rubio. And Donald Trump didn’t even finish second in Minnesota, but was left behind as a distant third.
Of all of the candidates, Marco Rubio began by offering an uplifting message of a diverse America moving forward into a new century. For many of us who believe that an understanding of the common good, respect for life, personal character, and a vibrant faith that informs conscience are the standards by which the Ship of State should navigate, Rubio was a shining star in this crowded field.
Yes, what happened in Minnesota is the way it was supposed to be. But as proud as I am to be a Minnesotan today, that simply is not the way it has been anywhere else. Or the way it will be in the future. Of 23 states (almost half), Rubio has won only one (along with the territory of Puerto Rico).
Utilitarian economists, skeletons of schoolmasters, Commissioners of Fact, genteel and used-up infidels, gabblers of many little dog’s-eared creeds, the poor you will have always with you. Cultivate in them, while there is yet time, the utmost graces of the fancies and affections, to adorn their lives so much in need of ornament; or, in the day of your triumph, when romance is utterly driven out of their souls, and they and a bare existence stand face to face, Reality will take a wolfish turn, and make an end of you.
From the Orwellian "assisted death" in the headline to the national civil liberties group arguing for government power to force violations of religious conscience, this article from The Globe and Mail shows that there is nothing exceptionally American about the impulse to use the spending power of government to impose an orthodoxy of "assisted autonomy."
A powerful theme in contemporary constitutional law is the idea of progress. Catholic legal theory both cautions and confounds when one considers what counts as progress in our constitutional order.
In the name of decency, humanity, and truth, we call on President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, and all members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives to recognize and give public expression to the fact that Christians in Iraq and Syria—along with Yazidis, Turkmen, Shabak, and Shi’a Muslims—are victims of a campaign of genocide being waged against them by ISIS. In pleading that this genocide be recognized and called by its name, we join by Pope Francis, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, the European Parliament, and many others. We urge our fellow Americans and all men and women of goodwill everywhere to join us in prayer for those of all faiths who are victims, and in determination to act in the humanitarian and political spheres to aid them and put an end to their victimization.
Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, Princeton University
Cornel West, Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice, Union Theological Seminary and Class of 1943 University Professor in the Center for African American Studies, Emeritus, Princeton University
