As I mentioned a few days ago, the Typepad platform (which has long hosted the Mirror of Justice blog) is shutting down. I am working on "exporting" -- and trying to save in a searchable and readable form -- our two-decades-worth of posts and conversations, and I will spare readers the gory details of my efforts to deal with those managing Typepad's disappearance. Please keep an eye on my Twitter/X account, or on the webpage of the Notre Dame Program on Church, State & Society, for updates and more information.
I am very grateful to the many colleagues and friends who have participated in this effort along the way. And, I'm grateful to the many tens of thousands of readers who have checked in, or followed us closely. I'd like to "sign off" with just three quick items:
First, here is a short essay, called "The Sign of the Cross and Jurisprudence," which I've made available to my students in every class I've taught at Notre Dame since 1999.
Second, here are three quotes, which I include on the front page of all my syllabi:
There are no ordinary people.
You have never talked to a mere mortal.
Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal,
and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.
But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit –
immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.
C.S. Lewis
Abandonment of the rules produces monsters; so does neglect of persons.
Judge John T. Noonan
Gradually it was disclosed to me
that the line separating good and evil passes not through states,
nor between classes, nor between political parties either –
but right through every human heart[.]
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Third, here is one of my very first MOJ posts, on a theme that, I fear, I came back to with irritating regularity:
One of our shared goals for this blog is to . . . "discover[] how our Catholic perspective can inform our understanding of the law." One line of inquiry that, in my view, is particularly promising -- and one that I know several of my colleagues have written and thought about -- involves working through the implications for legal questions of a Catholic "moral anthropology." By "moral anthropology," I mean an account of what it is about the human person that does the work in moral arguments about what we ought or ought not to do and about how we ought or ought not to be treated; I mean, in Pope John Paul II's words, the “moral truth about the human person."
The Psalmist asked, "Lord, what is man . . . that thou makest account of him?” (Ps. 143:3). This is not only a prayer, but a starting point for jurisprudential reflection. All moral problems are anthropological problems, because moral arguments are built, for the most part, on anthropological presuppositions. That is, as Professor Elshtain has put it, our attempts at moral judgment tend to reflect our “foundational assumptions about what it means to be human." Jean Bethke Elshtain, The Dignity of the Human Person and the Idea of Human Rights: Four Inquiries, 14 JOURNAL OF LAW AND RELIGION 53, 53 (1999-2000). As my colleague John Coughlin has written, the "anthropological question" is both "perennial" and profound: "What does it mean to be a human being?” Rev. John J. Coughlin, Law and Theology: Reflections on What it Means to Be Human, 74 ST. JOHN’S LAW REVIEW 609, 609 (2000).
In one short article of mine, "Christian Witness, Moral Anthropology, and the Death Penalty," I explore the implications for the death penalty of a Catholic anthropology, one that emphasizes our "creaturehood" more than, say, our "autonomy." And, my friend Steve Smith (University of San Diego) has an paper out that discusses what a "person as believer" anthropology might mean for our freedom-of-religion jurisprudence that fleshes out excellent article. I wonder if any of my colleagues have any thoughts on these matters?
Our Lady, Mirror of Justice, pray for us!