Item:
China will have 30 million more men than women by 2020, the state news media reported. There are now 119 boys born for every 100 girls, an imbalance bolstered by the one-child policy and a cultural preference for sons.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
China is "skewing men"
The stem-cell debate and reality
A worth-while read, by Yuval Levin, on the extent to which the case for embryo-destroying research -- often being advanced by those who like to regard themselves as part of the "reality-based community" -- rests on puffery and misdirection.
"Losing Faith" in the death penalty
Americans are "losing faith" in capital punishment, according to this Financial Times piece. This passage, though, puzzled me:
Last week, a legislative commission in New Jersey recommended that the state abolish the death penalty, after it found "no compelling evidence" that capital punishment served a legitimate purpose, and increasing evidence that it "is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency".
What counts as "evidence" -- compelling or not -- that capital punishment serves a "legitimate purpose"? I suppose if the "legitimate purpose" in question is general deterrence, then we could have the usual arguments about whether the death penalty deters. But what about retribution? What would count as evidence that the death penalty serves this purpose of punishment? Or, does New Jersey think retribution is *not* a legitimate purpose? Is the evidence to which the passage refers the kind of data the Supreme Court used in, say, it's recent execution-of-the-developmentally-disabled case, i.e., observations about trends in various states and nations?
Does anyone have a link to the New Jersey commission's report?
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Another "ministerial exception" case
This one from the Sixth Circuit. As described here, the court ruled that, although a hospital had agreed, as part of its accreditation, not to discriminate on the basis of disability, this agreement did not constitute a waiver of its right to invoke the ministerial exception in the face of a claim that it had, in fact, discriminated on the basis of liability.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Executing the Insane
The United States Supreme Court has agreed to review a case, Panetti v. Quarterman, which presents a question about the constitutionally required standard for deciding when a convicted murderer is competent to be executed. More than 20 years ago, in Ford v. Wainwright, the Justices -- though splintered -- ruled that the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits "cruel and unusual" punishment, does not permit the government to execute a prisoner who is, at the time of his execution, insane. But what, exactly, does this requirement mean?
Panetti understands, apparently, that the state of Texas wants and plans to kill him. He believes, though, that this is not really because of his conviction for fatally shooting his in-laws in the presence of his estranged wife and their 3-year-old child, but is instead really part of a conspiracy among the state and others to prevent him from preaching the Gospel. So, is his awareness of what's coming enough to satisfy Ford? Should it satisfy us?
The answer depends, it appears, on why we think we ought not to execute -- or, why we think the Constitution does not permit us to execute -- an insane person. In the insanity-defense or death-penalty-for-juveniles context, our concerns have to do primarily with the defendant's culpability for the crime. Here, in contrast, we are assuming that the defendant was convicted of a crime for which he is legally responsible and for which the death penalty is legally authorized.
Justice Marshall, in Ford, discussed the common-law bar against executing a prisoner who had lost his sanity and concluded that "whether [the common-law bar's] aim [was] to protect the condemned from fear and pain without comfort of understanding, or to protect the dignity of society itself from the barbarity of exacting mindless vengeance, [it] finds enforcement in the Eighth Amendment." He suggested. among other things, that executing a person who is insane (a) has questionable retributive value because such a person "has no comprehension of why he has been singled out and stripped of his fundamental right to life" and (b) has no deterrence value because it does not serve as an example for others. What's more, he added, "the natural abhorrence civilized societies feel at killing one who has no capacity to come to grips with his own conscience or deity is still vivid today."
Are these arguments and claims persuasive? Or, put differently, do they retain the persuasive force they might have had in earlier times? And, if they are, then what do they suggest about the "sanity standard" the Court ought to embrace in Panetti?
Tuesday, January 9, 2007
Congrats to Lumen Christi
This past Saturday, the annual Lumen Christi / Christian Law Professors' Fellowship conference was -- once again -- the highlight of "AALS week." MOJ-folks -- Patrick Brennan, John Breen, Lisa Schiltz, Susan Stabile -- were invaluable contributors.
Patrick's talk, in the context of a panel on the nature and future of Christian legal scholarship, explored -- among other things -- the way great legal scholars like Mary Ann Glendon and John Noonan have served as Christian legal scholars not so much by treating Christianity as a "theory of everything," but simply by example. John Breen offered a spirited critique of the Skeel / Stuntz argument against legal moralism in the context of abortion regulation. Susan Stabile and Lisa Schiltz -- 2/3 of a fabulous panel on Christian feminism-- really did "Catholic legal theory," exploring the potential contributions to feminism and feminist theory of Pope John Paul II's work and Catholic anthropology.
There's a lot more to be said about these (and others') talks at the conference. Take it away, friends . . . .
Monday, January 8, 2007
Abortion and Catholic Social Teaching
ZENIT has this interview up, with my friend, Fr. Thomas Williams, about abortion and Catholic Social Teaching. Here is a taste:
Q: What does Catholic social thought offer to the debate on abortion that bioethics doesn't? What is its specific contribution?
Father Williams: Since Catholic social teaching contributes so much to this discussion, it is impossible for me to do this question justice here. In its analysis of the socio-cultural, political, familial and economic dimensions of human action, the Church's social teaching offers invaluable points of reference for a public discussion of abortion.
As I mentioned earlier, the Church's teaching on the content and requirements of the "common good" sheds important light on respect and reverence for human life as a pillar of the just society.
Moreover, the principle of equality, based on the equal dignity of all human beings, not only grounds our democratic system but also demands that we deprive no one of this essential dignity.
Historically the greatest social evils perpetrated on humanity -- genocide, racism, abortion, slavery -- have always violated the principle of equality, relegating an entire sector of the human family to an inferior status, with a dignity lower than the rest. Since human rights flow from human dignity, once the latter is called into question, rights fall at the same time.
As a legal "right," abortion brings forth countless social issues requiring a reasoned response: questions of conscientious objection, the rule of law in a democracy, the pedagogical function of law, and the role of moral truth in a democratic system, to name but a few.
The NYT series of exemptions: Update
A few months ago, I -- like many other bloggers -- linked to and discussed Diana Henriques's New York Times series on religious exemptions. I also linked to Dr. John Dilulio's very critical response, which appeared in the Weekly Standard. I should have also linked to this letter, which Ms. Henriques sent to the Standard, in which she replies to DiIulio's critique.
More on Romney, Mormons, and Taking Religion Seriously
Here is a long and thoughtful response, by Russell Arben Fox, to Damon Linker's recent TNR essay -- about which I blogged here --- on Mitt Romney, Mormonism, and politics. And here is law prof Nate Oman, of the Times and Seasons blog. Really good stuff, and (obviously) relevant to the question we so often address, in various forms, here, i.e., what does the Catholic faith mean for politics?
"Religious lawyering"
Here is the abstract of a new paper, "The Religious Lawyering Critique," by Bruce Green:
There is a developing body of legal scholarship on the relevance of religion to lawyers' work. Some authors offer a critique of the legal profession that views its norms as hostile to religious belief and identity, as inconsistent with religious and ordinary social morality, and as presupposing an amoral lawyering style. This article, which grew out of an AALS program on Professional Responsibility and the Religious Traditions, examines the religious lawyering critique. Initially, it notes that prior legal-ethics scholarship challenges both the critique's descriptive premises, such as that the profession has endorsed the extreme "hired gun" conception, and its normative premises, such as that a lawyer's personal values should dominate the legal representation. The article then explores how the critique is in tension with other writings on religious lawyering that assume that religious lawyers can generally practice consistently with the legal profession's norms, that it is not "amoral" to implement lawful instructions to which one is morally opposed, that helping clients achieve their ends can be a moral good in itself, and that professional values are largely consistent with religious ones at least at a level of generality. Finally, the article questions the critics' premise that when religious and professional expectations do conflict, religious expectations are necessarily better.
Rob Vischer and Amy Uelmen, what say you?
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