Next up is Lisa Schiltz, whose paper is called "'You Talkin' to Me?' Who Are We Talking to? And Why Should They Listen to Us?" If Rob was looking at the current landscape, and John was reminding us about the past, Lisa's focus is on the future and, in particular, the future of faculty scholarship in Catholic Legal Theory.
During the past 10 years, three big things have happened: The collapse of the legal market and its effects on law schools' priorities and budgets; the explosion of the Internet (smartphones, text, social media, etc.) as the primary mode of communication; and a change of the relationship between the Church and the world (one that is marked by, Lisa suggests, a loss of confidence -- and of interest -- in the enterprise of bringing the thought of, say, John Paul II to bear on contemporary issues, questions, and debates). These three things have caused, or contributed to, something of a retreat from the Catholic Legal Theory project.
However, as Lisa reminds us, one thing that has not changed is the responsibility -- one that the Compendium characterizes as "urgent" -- that Catholic legal scholars and law teachers -- as called lay people in the Church -- have to and in the world. So, with this responsibility in view . . . what and how should we think about the three changes mentioned earlier? First, we should be good stewards, and appreciative of those who make possible our scholarly work, and not self-indulgent. Next, what about blogging, and blogging (etc) as opposed to (and in competition with) traditional legal scholarship? (She draws from Carr's, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Minds and talks a bit about the way our means and modes of expression and communication are changing what and how we think. As she does, I feel sheepish about live-blogging. And yet . . . .)
John Breen (along with Lee Strang) has been doing a lot of interesting and important work on the history of Catholic legal education in the United States. Now, in his talk, he is presenting some of that work to the group, helping explain how Catholic Legal Theory has, in fact, been instantiated in the structures, practices, and curricula of actual Catholic law schools, past and present.
He emphasizes, among other things, that -- generally speaking -- Catholic law schools in America were not explicitly founded in order to be vehicles or homes for Catholic Legal Theory, but instead to be means of advancement for Catholic immigrants and to enhance the "prestige" of the various then-new Catholic universities. But, over time, calls came -- at least at some schools -- for a more distinctively Catholic legal education, and these calls tended to emphasize St. Thomas Aquinas and jurisprudence. For a few decades, many Catholic law schools were requiring Thomistic jurisprudence courses. But, by the early 1960s, for various reasons, the Neo-Thomistic "proposal" had "failed" and, at most places, there was a "loss of a distinctively Catholic jurisprudence in the curriculum." (I had not appreciated the fact that, between 1965 and 1975, the number of law students doubled or thought much about the connection between this development, on the one hand, and the distinctively Catholic character, mission, or curriculum of Catholic law schools, on the other.) John closes with thoughts inspired by and drawn from Philip Gleason's Contending With Modernity and with questions about what it is (if anything) that could replace Neo-Thomism as the organizing "intellectual architecture" for distinctively Catholic law schools. Could "Catholic Social Thought" do the job? John is skeptical.
Rob's talk is called "How Should Catholic Legal Theory Matter to Catholic Legal Education in a Time of Retrenchment." He's asking about Catholic Legal Theory's connection to legal education in three ways: As a distinctive feature of a law school that helps (or not) to attract applicants and students; as a lens or topic for faculty research; and as an aspect of the curriculum. Drawing on his own experience as the dean of a Catholic law school -- an intentionally Catholic law school -- Rob is not confident that Catholic legal theory, or a school's Catholic mission more generally, does much work in attracting students (especially in the current difficult times) and he also doubts that faculty research in this field does or can do much to boost rankings or appeal to students concerned about skills, practical matters, and graduating "practice ready." And, in the curriculum, he discusses (drawing on his experience with St. Thomas's required justice course), it's difficult to incorporate Catholic Legal Theory -- at least explicitly. It's often seen as not practical, not relevant, and not sufficiently determinate (or perhaps too determinate).
So . . . why should Catholic law schools care about Catholic Legal Theory? Perhaps because, he suggests, we believe it's true. And also, explains, because it helps give faculty a sense of their work as vocation and as having a pastoral dimension.
Catholic Legal Theory matters, even in an era of retrenchment, in part because Catholic *law schools* matter, to the common good and not only to those schools' immediate stakeholders.
