Brian Tamanaha has long been rattling the cages of his friends and colleagues to start talking about the social justice and fairness implications of skyrocketing law school tuition. He now wonders:
Every year, law schools sponsor an extraordinary number of conferences on a variety of issues, with justice an often-mentioned theme. Yet I do not recall seeing a conference on the justice-related implications of the high tuition charged by law schools (heading toward $40,000 per year at private schools).
In addition to the points mentioned above, such a critical self-examination might also consider the consequences of the shift away from need-based scholarships, and the fact that in some law schools students at the bottom of the class, those with the most dismal earning prospects, are now subsidizing students at the top of the class, those who stand to earn the most.
Shouldn't Catholic law schools be leading the charge on this, particularly at a time when salary prospects are so far removed from the expectations of most non-elite law school grads? (It's not an easy problem to solve, I realize. Law school is too expensive, but that does not mean I think I'm overpaid. There should be more need-based scholarships, but I still want to attract high-LSAT students. Etc., etc.)
Last summer, there was Knocked Up. Now there's this, which looks to be an interesting movie:
New York Times December 5, 2007
Seeking Mr. and Mrs. Right for a Baby on the Way A.O. Scott
Juno MacGuff, the title character of Jason Reitman’s new film, is 16 and pregnant, but “Juno”
could not be further from the kind of hand-wringing, moralizing
melodrama that such a condition might suggest. Juno, played by the
poised, frighteningly talented Ellen Page,
is too odd and too smart to be either a case study or the object of
leering disapproval. She assesses her problem, and weighs her response
to it, with disconcerting sang-froid.
It’s not that Juno treats her pregnancy as a joke, but rather that in the sardonic spirit of the screenwriter, Diablo Cody,
she can’t help finding humor in it. Tiny of frame and huge of belly,
Juno utters wisecracks as if they were breathing exercises, referring
to herself as “the cautionary whale.”
At first her sarcasm is bracing and also a bit jarring —
“Hello, I’d like to procure a hasty abortion,” she says when she calls
a women’s health clinic — but as “Juno” follows her from pregnancy test
to delivery room (and hastily retreats from the prospect of abortion),
it takes on surprising delicacy and emotional depth. The snappy
one-liners are a brilliant distraction, Ms. Cody’s way of clearing your
throat for the lump you’re likely to find there in the movie’s last
scenes.
[Too read the rest of the (positive) review, click here.]
Mitt Romney Is No Jack Kennedy By KENNETH L. WOODWARD
INEVITABLY, Mitt Romney’s
long-awaited speech on faith and religious freedom tomorrow at the
George Bush Presidential Library at Texas A&M will be compared to
John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech to Protestant ministers in Houston, just
90 miles away. Like Kennedy, Mr. Romney faces questions about his
religious beliefs and how they might affect his judgments as president.
Also like Kennedy, Mr. Romney realizes — and polls demonstrate — that a
sizable number of voters (again, mostly Southern white Protestants)
oppose him because of his religion.
But the differences are more pronounced than the similarities.
I just posted a paper at SSRN. Some MOJ-readers may be interested.
Religion as a Basis of Lawmaking?
Herein of the Nonestablishment of Religion
Abstract: The question whether in a liberal democracy
religion--religious rationales--may serve as a basis of (coercive) lawmaking
must be disaggregated into two distinct questions: First, is religion a morally
legitimate basis of lawmaking in a liberal democracy? Second, is religion a
constitutionally legitimate basis of lawmaking in the United States? I have
addressed (elsewhere) the first question--as have many others. In my judgment,
the answer is yes; and, again in my judgment, the most powerful defense of that
answer is philosopher Christopher Eberle's important book Religious Conviction
in Liberal Politics (2002). This Essay addresses the second question. The second
question, which is about constitutional legitimacy, should not be confused with
the first question, which is about moral legitimacy.
Like other liberal
democracies, the United States is committed to the right to freedom of religious
practice. Unlike most other liberal democracies, however, the United States is
also committed to the nonestablishment of religion. According to the
constitutional law of the United States, government--that is, lawmakers and
other government officials--may neither prohibit the "free exercise" of religion
nor "establish" religion. Does the nonestablishment norm (as I like to call it)
ban religion as a basis of lawmaking? More precisely, should the
nonestablishment norm be understood to ban laws (and policies) for which the
only discernible rationale--or, at least, the only discernible rationale other
than an implausible secular rationale--is religious?
Is it a good thing
that government in the United States is constitutionally forbidden to establish
religion. So far as I can tell, there is a virtual consensus among us citizens
of the United States, including those of us who are religious believers, that,
all things considered, it is good both for religions and for social harmony that
our lawmakers may not establish religion. The serious question among us,
therefore, is not whether the constitutional law of the United States should
include the nonestablishment norm but what the nonestablishment norm should be
understood to mean--to forbid--in one or another context. In this Essay I ask
what the nonestablishment norm should be understood to forbid in the context of
lawmaking. I conclude that the answer to the question whether the
nonestablishment norm should be understood to ban laws for which the only
discernible rationale is religious, depends: yes with respect to some religious
rationales, no with respect to others. I also conclude, however, that insofar as
the nonestablishment norm is concerned, lawmakers are free to support laws--to
vote to enact laws--on the basis of any religious rationale whatsoever. Those
two conclusions may seem to pull in opposite directions; I explain in this Essay
why they do not.
Republican to Huckabee: You’re too Christian to be president. Paul
Mirengoff, an attorney in Washington, D.C., and a contributor to the
conservative superblog Power Line, is worried that Mike Huckabee,
the former Arkansas governor who is rising in the polls in the race for
the Republican nomination for president, would ask himself “What would
Jesus do?” in matters of foreign policy.
“My main objection to Huckabee — the reason why he’s my fifth choice
out of five — is that I lack confidence in his ability to fight
terrorism,” Mirengoff writes. He later notes that Huckabee “opposes
waterboarding and would close the Guantanamo Bay detention center” and
adds, “Waterboarding and long-term detention aren’t very ‘Christian’;
they merely keep terrorists out of action and, in special circumstances
enable us to find out where we’re going to be attacked next and/or
where we can find those who are planning the next attacks.”
Mirengoff’s post leads John Cole, who blogs at Balloon Juice, to break down the Republican field on behalf of single-issue, pro-waterboarding voters:
Huckabee, McCain, and Paul all outright oppose waterboarding. That
leaves Tancredo, who is unelectable but enthusiastic about torture,
Giuliani, who is proving to be quite the liability for the GOP, and
Multiple Choice Mitt, who may or may not support waterboarding, but he
will have to consult with the polls, his advisors, and, according to
the last debate, John McCain. Unfortunately, Mitt is not the right kind
of Christian or Christian enough (whereas Huckabee is too Christian)
for the current GOP, so he isn’t so great a choice.
What is a wingnut to do? I have an idea - FOUR MORE YEARS!
At the Dialogue of Cultures’ conference, Jean Elshtain’s paper (title above) suggested that it was easy to predict a winner in a battle between the hard extremism found in some elements of Islam and the soft nihilism (and hedonism) found culturally rooted in the West.She agreed with the pope that the situation needs to be addressed at both ends.Having exhausted the faith of Jerusalem (and Athens), the West has lost the ability to defend human dignity.To be culturally viable, there is an urgent need to reestablish the mutually reinforcing dialogue between faith and reason in the West.
As for Islam, Elshtain argues that we should take the jihadists at face value – this war is about religion and not economics or politics.Those of us in the West can contribute to the project of peace by supporting (standing in solidarity with?) moderate Muslim scholars who are attempting to retrieve a non-voluntarist interpretation of Islam, often at risk to their own lives.Elshtain also pointed out that West suffers from some of the effects of voluntarism within its own tradition, suggesting that the seeds of modern notions of self-sovereignty were sown in the 14th and 15 centuries by theologians who replaced God as logos with God as will.
She said much more and more eloquently than I have captured here, but I think this short couple of paragraphs gives a sense of her thought provoking paper.
Carter Snead had this to say in response to biologist Lee Silver's argument that ipc cells are potential embryos:
Silver has made this argument in the past, and it has been decisively rebutted by Robby George and Pat Lee ( http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OTNiYWM2ZjJiYWVlN2IyMzFjOWYwMDZmMTc4MzU2MGU =). In short, Silver is arguing that ES cells can become human beings because a process called "tetraploid complementation" (in which ES cells are fused with a mouse embryos that has 4 sets of chromosomes rather than the usual two) produces a new chimeric organism. But as George and Lee show below, tetraploid complementation is simply a kind of conception (or inception) in which ES cells play a role. Silver's argument is exactly analogous to the claim that a human skin cell can become an organism because when its nucleus is placed in an ennucleated egg, this process (cloning or SCNT) gives rise to a new organism, genetically virtually identical to the skin cell donor. Therefore, this argument would conclude, a skin cell is the same as an embryo. This is obviously fallacious, and ignores the key difference between organ and organism, parts and wholes.
Catholic social justice leaders, priests, religious sisters and evangelical Christians want a “ceasefire in the Christmas culture wars.” These leaders are challenging Bill O’Reilly of Fox News and others who have lashed out against a so-called secular “War on Christmas” to join them in a new campaign that restores a focus on the common good during this holy season.
In an “Open Letter to Christmas Culture Warriors” to be published as an advertisement in the New York Post, Washington Times and National Catholic Reporter, the group says that outrage over some department stores using “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” fails to address the profound moral challenges we face in confronting the threats to human dignity in our world.
“We believe the real assault on Christmas is how a season of peace, forgiveness and goodwill has been sidelined by a focus on excessive consumerism,” the letter states. “The powerful message Christ brings to the world is ‘good news for the poor.’ Instead, Christmas is being reduced to a corporate-sponsored holiday that idolizes commerce and materialism.”
I'm basically sympathetic to this kind of critique. Isn't it true that many of the "keep America Christian" efforts seem to be motivated more by the idea of retaining (cultural) power than the idea of pursuing Christ-like servanthood?
But there's a big potential pitfall in this criticism too. The culture warriors may often overlook servanthood, but they are right to oppose secularism -- and the social-justice Christians need that opposition to secularism in order for there to be public space for their own critique. If it's improper to bring up Jesus's name in pluralistic public settings (including department stores), then you can't proclaim, "Jesus came to bring good news to the poor and oppressed," in those settings. The social-justice types need to give one cheer, maybe two, for the culture warriors.
The "Christian nation" notion can be criticized for promoting arrogance rather than servanthood; the critique can even be "secular" in the sense that it emphasizes what Jesus means for this world, not just for the church or for our souls after death. But those critics should not, as they sometimes do, buy into secularism in the sense of "leave Jesus out of public settings so as to respect others" -- because that cuts the ground from under their own proclamations.
I've explored this distinction between servanthood and secularism in this article (posted at the right), and in this one called "Christianity and the Secular in Modern Public Life" (link is near the bottom of page, not the top).
Rick's recent post described Prof. Russell Korobkin's arguments in the wake of the announcement of the discovery of an alternative to embyonic stem cells -- the ability to induce a pluripotent state in skin cells ("induced pluripotent state", or "ipc"). Korobkin repeats the basic argument for continuing with embryonic research despite this development -- that there's nothing ethically problematic about the use of embryonic stem cells for research.
There's an interview with biologist Lee Silver on the NYT site that demonstrates a twist on this basic argument. He argues that the ipc cells aren't morally distinguishable from embryonic stem cells because they, too, could develop into embryos. Is that true? (Carter?) I haven't gotten that impression from anything I've read. His claim is that this whole discovery is a cynical semantic game that's going to allow scientists to essentially continue embryonic stem cell research because the vocabulary is being manipulated. (But I gather that doesn't trouble him, because he shares Korobkin's view about the ethics of embryonic cell research.)
The interview is worth watching, for a sobering sense of the way some scientists argue about this issue. Listen carefully around 4 minutes, 30 seconds into the interview for the most chilling description of the human soul you're likely to hear!
As expected, the Dialogue of Cultures conference at Notre Dame was great.David Solomon, Dan McIinerny, and our own Elizabeth Kirk are to be commended for their work in bring the conference together.In addition to the talks, the conference also provided a great opportunity for discussion during breaks, meals, and late night with old friends and new.One of my new acquaintances works in the recording industry in California.He paid his own way to the conference to present a paper largely because one of his former professors (another conference speaker) had inspired and challenged him 30 years ago.What a testimony to the professor’s use of his gifts as teacher!As time permits over the next few days, I’ll blog on some of the conference talks.I heard wonderful things about the “Natural Law in American Catholic Social Ethics:John Ryan, Jacques Maritain, and John Courtney Murray” panel, but I had to be at another panel.Perhaps Patrick Brennan can offer us a synopsis of what he, Michael Moreland, and Zach Calo discussed in that session. I would also ask others who were at the conference to send me their reflections on the various talks for possible posting.
