In addition to the upcoming conference on "Catholic Social Thought and Citizenship" on Saturday, October 11, 2008 (details here), don't forget to calendar the annual John F. Scarpa Conference on Law, Politics, and Culture. The next Scarpa Conference will be held at Villanova on February 19, 2008, and for those who like to plan way out, the fourth annual Scarpa will be held Thursday, October 22, 2009.
As previously announced, the third annual Scarpa Conference will feature Professor Martha Nussbaum as its keynote speaker. Professor Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics in the University of Chicago Law School; at Chicago, she is also appointed in Philosophy, Classics, Divinity, and Political Science. The conference will focus on issues raised in her new book Liberty of Conscience (Basic Books 2008). Also speaking at the conference will be R. Kent Greenawalt, University Professor, Columbia University; Roderick M. Hills Jr., William T. Comfort III Professor, New York University School of Law; Jesse Choper, Dean emeritus and Earl Warren Professor of Public Law, Berkeley Law (Boalt Hall), UC Berkeley; Richard Garnett, Professor, Notre Dame Law School; Very Reverend Richard Schenk, OP, Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA; Geoffrey Stone, Dean emeritus and Harry Kalven Jr. Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago Law School; and John T. McGreevy, Dean of Arts and Letters and Professor of History, University of Notre Dame. Details about the conference schedule will be available well before February, so please stay tuned.
I am delighted to announce that the fourth annual Scarpa Conference will be dedicated to celebrating and exploring the work of Joseph Vining, Hutchins Professor of Law in the University of Michigan Law School. The conference, which will be held on Thursday, October 22, 2009, will coincide with Professor Vining's fortieth year on the Michigan faculty, during which time he has written, in addition to dozens of articles and book chapters, Legal Identity (Yale 1978 ), The Authoritative and the Authoritarian (U of Chicago 1986), From Newton's Sleep (Princeton 1995), and The Song Sparrow and the Child: Claims of Science and Humanity (Notre Dame 2004). Also speaking at the conference will be Judge John T. Noonan Jr., United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit; Lee Bollinger, President of Columbia University; H. Jefferson Powell, Professor of Law and Divinity, Duke University School of Law; James Boyd White, Hart Wright Professor of Law, Professor of English, and Professor Classics, emeritus, University of Michigan; and Steven Smith, Warren Distinguished Professor, University of San Diego School of Law.
Joseph Vining is always worth listening to, his work worthy of the careful study it invites and even demands. Jeff Powell said this of From Newton's Sleep: "From Newton's Sleep is one of the most important books ever written about law as a practice that involves whole persons and engages the emotions, imagination, and spirit as well as the mind. It is -- what is ever rarer -- a wise book, with much to teach lawyers about their profession and all of us about how to live humanely in our world. . . . A superb accomplishment." I hope many will be able to join us at Villanova and make the most of this opportunity to engage in the kind of humane, humanistic inquiry that Joe Vining has modeled for us all over four decades.
Monday, September 15, 2008
In anticipation of the upcoming election, this year Villanova Law's annual conference on Catholic social thought will focus on "Catholic Social Thought and Citizenship." We hope to see many old friends and to make many new ones on Saturday, October 11. Details about attending are here and here. Speakers include: Michael Baxter, John Breen, John Coleman SJ, Bruce Frohnen, Ed Gaffney, Greg Kalscheur SJ, Christine Kelleher, John Leown, Kevin Lee, Eugene McCarraher, Michael Moreland, Aidan O'Neil, Tisha Rajendra, Mark Sargent, Jeanne Heffernan Schindler, Amy Uelmen, and Michael J. White.
Please plan to join us for what promises to be a spirited exchange of views on topics that are on everyone's mind.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
A friend of MOJ suggests that my current highest, best service is to call attention to this here . Who am I to disagree? This is only the second time Planned Parenthood's Action Fund has bestirred itself to endorse a candidate for President of the United States.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
The third annual John F. Scarpa Conference on Law, Politics, and Culture, which was originally scheduled for September 2008, will be held instead on Thursday, February 19, 2009. The venue remains Villanova Law School.
The keynote address will be given by Professor Martha Nussbaum on a topic drawn from her recent Liberty of Conscience (Basic Books 2008). Also speaking at the conference wil be Kent Greenawalt, Geoff Stone, Jesse Choper, Richard Schenk OP, John McGreevy, Rick Hills, and MOJ's very own Rick Garnett.
Please mark your calendars and plan to join us for the event.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Affirmed.
I wasn't at Princeton for the event, but I did, just the other day, read Aidan O'Neill's paper "Judging Catholics: Natural Law, The Catholic Church, and the Supreme Court." First, there's the issue, mentioned by Rick, of the tendentious characterizations, such as "conformist" vs. "non-conformist." Predictably, they do the following sort of work that, well, speaks for itself: "It might be thought that the Second Vatican Council marked the ascendancy of the non-conformist tendency within the Church in the 20th century bu the long Papacy of John Paul II and the election of Benedict XVI as Pope might seem to mark a renewed ascendancy of conformist Catholicism" (47, n.1).
But there's also the issue, likewise mentioned by Rick, that the argument is wrongheaded and, at times, ill-informed. O'Neill's got a lot going on in the paper (divorce, gay marriage, and contraception come up frequently), but the thesis seems to be that judges in our constitutional democracy would violate their judicial oath by doing what the "conformist" tradition is said to demand of them, to wit, to use the judicial office to advance the Church's "agenda" (40). According to O'Neill, "for a judge to decide not to apply or to re-interpret a law in a manner which is determined not by the intra-systemic rules and principles governing legal interpretation, but by extraneous considerations -- such as his own or his Church's moral values -- would a usurpation of his or her office" (34). "The duty of public office holders is to uphold the Constitution under which they hold office, not to undermine that office by seeking to further the agenda of another body or to promote values which are not compatible with the civil society in which they hold office" (39-40).
Where to begin? What I take to be the Church's actual understanding of what a faithful Catholic judge should do, if he or she is to be faithful, is altogether missing from O'Neill's account. For an accurate statement of the Thomistic position which inspire and shape the contemporary statements of the magisterium (whether "conformist" or "non-conformist"), one can do no better, for my money, than chapters 3 and 4 of Russ Hittinger's The First Grace (2003), a work that O'Neill appears not to be familiar with.
On the question of what the judicial office as intended under Article III of our Constitution requires, and what it rules out, in terms of (what we might call, in hope of avoiding a tendentious description) moral judgment, the book to read is H. Jefferson Powell, Constitutional Conscience: The Moral Dimension of Judicial Decision (2008).
In a word, the Church doesn't expect the kind of judicial activism O'Neill describes (at length) and fears, and our Constitution does not rule out -- but indeed requires -- some (but by no means all) of the judicial moral judgment of the sort that O'Neill fears. The premise that the Church's moral teaching amounts to an attempt to get simpletons to advance her "agenda" in the world is not the beginning of a promising argument or discussion. But then again, as the reader of O'Neill's paper will see, the author seems to think that people in democratic civil society are, on moral matters, epistemically privileged/better off vis-a-vis the Church (see, e.g., 36).
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Pope Benedict XVI's visit has been generating more good stuff and goodness than many of us can keep up with. The Holy Father's talk to Catholic educators this afternoon will be studied and parsed, and -- one hopes -- absorbed, for a long time to come. Here, for now, is the nugget on "academic freedom:"
"In regard to faculty members at Catholic colleges universities, I wish to reaffirm the great value of academic freedom. In virtue of this freedom you are called to search for the truth wherever careful analysis of evidence leads you. Yet it is also the case that any appeal to the principle of academic freedom in order to justify positions that contradict the faith and the teaching of the Church would obstruct or even betray the university's identity and mission; a mission at the heart of the Church's munus docendi and not somehow autonomous or independent of it."
The Pope understands and expresses this work of Catholic colleges and universities within the following context, which he expresses with characteristic beauty and acuity:
"The Church's primary mission of evangelization, in which educational institutions play a crucial role, is consonant with a nation's fundamental aspiration to develop a society truly worthy of the human person's dignity. At times, however, the value of the Church's contribution to the public forum is questioned. It is important therefore to recall that the truths of faith and of reason never contradict one another (cf. First Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith Dei Filius, IV: DS 3017; St. Augustine, Contra Academicos, III, 20, 43). The Church's mission, in fact, involves her in humanity's struggle to arrive at truth. In articulating revealed truth she serves all members of society by purifying reason, ensuring that it remains open to the consideration of ultimate truths. Drawing upon divine wisdom, she sheds light on the foundation of human morality and ethics, and reminds all groups in society that it is not praxis that creates truth but truth that should serve as the basis of praxis. Far from undermining the tolerance of legitimate diversity, such a contribution illuminates the very truth which makes consensus attainable, and helps to keep public debate rational, honest and accountable. Similarly the Church never tires of upholding the essential moral categories of right and wrong, without which hope could only wither, giving way to cold pragmatic calculations of utility which render the person little more than a pawn on some ideological chess-board."
As I see it, at least on one early reading, the primary message the Pope spoke to those who care -- or should care -- about the work of Catholic colleges and universities, in the US today, is that the work of these institutions is ecclesial: The Church's educational institutions serve -- indeed, participate in -- the Chuch's foundational mission to all peoples. The Church's educational institutions do this by inviting people to come together in -- and for -- the common pursuit of, and sharing of, the truth.
