I hasten to acknowledge at the outset that the only claim I have to expertise on the international law of the use of force and/or Catholic just war theory is two years of law school service on the Virginia Journal of International Law and having had one of the leading experts on that field as law school roommate and best man. Hence, I may be all wet on the following (although I tried to avoid that by being as inconclusive as possible!). But I offer it up as a start to turning the discussion from the question of whether Robertson is a crackpot to the merits of the underlying proposal.
The televangelist should have remembered Spiderman's message that "with great power comes great responsibility." By his blurting, Robertson aided Venezuelan autocrats such as Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel, who sarcastically said that assassination advocacy was "very Christian" and went on to argue that "religious fundamentalism is one of the great problems facing humanity." ...
... it's hard to see either general or specific biblical warrant for his fatwa. In general, as Paul wrote to Timothy, Christians are to pray "for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions."
Hugo Chavez is an evil tyrant, but so were many Roman emperors -- and Paul told Romans to "bless those who persecute you. ... Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all." Last time I looked, "assassin" was not on the general list of honorable callings. Wartime is different, but last time I looked, we weren't at war with Venezuela.
Applying Old Testament history to current politics is sometimes exegetically tricky, but the wartime assassinations in Judges 3 and 4 -- Jael hammering a tent peg into Sisera's brain, Ehud the left-handed man thrusting his sword into the fat belly of the king of Moab -- also do not provide warrant for taking out Hugo Chavez. Nor do any of Christ's words or deeds suggest a WWJA (Who Would Jesus Assassinate?) list.
... God is the God of history. He raises up leaders and strikes them down. The Christian goal is to follow biblical principles, including "just war" ones, and not to create new orders. Christians who are careless bring dishonor to God's name by making many believe there is no difference between the pre-eminent religion of peace and the many religions of violence.
Olasky's comments suggest that the right inquiry would be to ask whether just war theory justifies assassinations. As Catholics, of course, I assume we would all agree with that, albeit focusing specifically on the Augustinian position.
First, here's an analysis arguing that assassination of political leaders during wartime is not inconsistent with (secular) just war theory.
... what if the leaders are removed from the area of hostilities? Are they fair game? International law says they are. Therefore, the idea of assassination being morally wrong loses all meaning during war because the political leaders are legitimate targets. The moral equivalency of the "assassin" is the same as that of the coalition soldier fighting in the desert. It is the dysfunctional agreement during war: both sides try to kill the other side's forces, including the leaders.
I assume from Olasky's apparently careful phrasing that he would agree. On the other hand, however, here is a source positing that some will question that claim:
Political leaders such as Saddam Hussein or Fidel Castro, some have argued, are different: they are not obviously combatants, even where he has ultimate control over the military. Similar difficult questions concern countries where the commander of the military is a civilian, as in the United States. The question is of course further complicated by the problem of assigning combatant status at all when there is not a state of war, especially as regards the problem of terrorism, which takes place in what William Banks calls the “twilight zone between war and peace” (671).
Yet, even if just war theory would permit assassination of enemy leaders during wartime, does it follow that it permits peacetime assassinations of the leader of a state with whom we are at war? The second source cited above opines:
... it appears that the policy of assassination or targeted killing, though it may be morally legitimate in certain limited circumstances, must in general be considered impermissible under the Just War Doctrine. The principle of respect for human life does not in general allow premeditated, extrajudicial killings of specific individuals. Only in urgent situations or extreme circumstances, where there is no other means to avoid a given imminent harm, can assassinations be permitted. And to the extent the target is a political rather than a military leader, the presumption against assassination must be even stronger.
Presumably, those presumptions would have even more force in peace than in war, or at least I infer that Olasky would so conclude.
On the other hand, as Eugene Volokh notes, albeit without specific reference to the just war tradition, perhaps assassination would be licit as an alternative to war. As such, of course, the assassination would have to satisfy the core precepts of a just war (I've taken the list of element of Catholic just war from this source):
Just cause. War is permissible only to confront "a real and certain danger," i.e., to protect innocent life, to preserve conditions necessary for decent human existence and to secure basic human rights.
Competent authority. War must be declared by those with responsibility for public order, not by private groups or individuals.
Comparative justice. In essence: Which side is sufficiently "right" in a dispute, and are the values at stake critical enough to override the presumption against war? Do the rights and values involved justify killing? Given techniques of propaganda and the ease with which nations and individuals either assume or delude themselves into believing that God or right is clearly on their side, the test of comparative justice may be extremely difficult to apply.
Right intention. War can be legitimately intended only for the reasons set forth above as a just cause.
Last resort. For resort to war to be justified, all peaceful alternatives must have been exhausted.
Probability of success. This is a difficult criterion to apply, but its purpose is to prevent irrational resort to force or hopeless resistance when the outcome of either will clearly be disproportionate or futile.
Proportionality. This means that the damage to be inflicted and the costs incurred by war must be proportionate to the good expected by taking up arms.
As applied to Chavez, the analysis presumably would run as follows:
Just cause. What is the "real and certain danger"? As far as I can tell, Chavez is no saint, but there does not yet seem to be any real threat to innocent life or basic human rights.
Competent authority. Note that the competent authority here, namely the President, is bound by (although presumably could exempt himself from) executive orders banning assassination of foreign leaders.
Comparative justice. It's hardly clear that Chavez has done anything to us or his own people to justify an intentional extra-judicial targeted killing.
Right intention. Again, what's the just cause?
Last resort. We barely seem to be engaged with Chavez these days, let alone exhausting all alternatives to war.
Probability of success. Who knows? But they tried to kill Castro for years with often humorous failure to show for it.
Proportionality. Again, what has Chavez done that would justify taking him out?
In sum, even if assassination can sometimes be justified either in the context of or as an alternative to just war, it hardly seems that the Chavez case rises to the necessary level.
Northwestern law prof Andrew Koppelman has an interesting post over at Balkinization on the intelligent design debate. Here's an excerpt:
Cardinal Schonborn writes that there is “purpose and design in the natural world, including the world of living things.” He could mean two things by this. The first is that there is a point to the universe’s existence, and human life has cosmic significance. The second is that ordinary physical processes are not the product of blind causation, but of continuing divine intervention. You can accept the first proposition without accepting the second one. God might well have created a universe in which physical processes – say, the emergence of homo sapiens from other species, or the operation of your car’s engine – take place by themselves. The universe as a whole might be fraught with purpose, even if its parts operate mechanically. This in fact appears to be the view of the book of Genesis, which informs us that on the seventh day, after creating the universe, God rested. If God was resting, then evidently the universe was able to keep running by itself. . . . .
Galileo and Darwin do place greater demands on religious faith than their predecessors. They require that faith stand on its own bottom, rather than leaning on comforting hints drawn from observed phenomena. And this is, perhaps, why they are resisted so fiercely. Faith is hard. But the enemies of Darwin are not helping religion’s cause. If we did not, in our daily activities, assume a mindless, predictable nature, we probably could never do anything at all. The idea that religion necessarily rejects science and mechanism ought to appeal only to the most militant atheists. Its embrace by sophisticated religious people is bizarre.
I agree with the thrust of the post, but Koppelman seems to assume that there are only two possibilities: a totally intervening God who orchestrates every movement and occurrence in nature, or a totally absent God who starts things running and then leaves the scene. Christians, in my understanding, split the difference between these perspectives. Yes, God intervenes in nature, but God is not nature's puppet-master. The intervention is undeniable for those who believe in the Incarnation; the lack of absolute orchestration is undeniable for those who believe in free will (and the fallen state of nature that has resulted).
Widener law prof Robert Lipkin has posted his new paper, "The Harm of Same-Sex Marriage: Real or Imagined?" Here's the abstract:
The controversy over same-sex marriage centers on whether same-sex marriage harms traditional marriage. Some conservatives insist that it will and therefore argue that it should be legally prohibited. By contrast, some liberals are mystified over the contention that same-sex marriage can possibly harm anyone's traditional marriage. This article shows that conservatives and liberals are both right and that they are both wrong. Indeed, it is possible to fashion a rapprochement between reasonable conservatives and reasonable liberals. Conservatives are right that, in an important sense of harm, the legal recognition of same-sex marriage will indeed harm traditional marriage. Liberals are right that despite such harm, marriage should be extended to same-sex couples nonetheless. Implicit in this controversy is which types of harm can be recognized in a democratic society as being reasons for and against laws. A corollary question is who owns and is entitled to participate in American democratic institutions. Some types of harm and some types of exclusion represent a compelling state interest which can and should be legally prohibited. However, harm or exclusion that results merely from clashing normative environments generally must be permitted in a democratic society. While perhaps satisfying extremists on neither side, this rapprochement can contribute to a cease fire in one of the heated battle in the so-called culture wars.
Alison Sulentic from Duquesne sent this reponse to my query about the possible use of the Compendium as a teaching tool:
"I have spent some time reading the Compendium over the past few months. I teach a class at Duquesne Law School entitled "Faith, Justice & Social Responsibility" and, like you, I assign the encyclicals and other magesterial documents. However, at this point I don't think I will be assigning significant portions of the Compendium in lieu of the original encyclicals and Vatican II documents. I agree with the review in America a few months ago (I think it was by Tom Massaro) which noted that the Compendium is heavily footnoted to JP II's writings and that this has the somewhat unfortunate effect of unduly emphasizing his writings in comparison to other sources.
"While JP II's contribution to CST is important, I think it is equally important for the students to see that CST's roots extend well beyond JP II's work. In my class, I assign excerpts by Aristotle and Aquinas, as well as materials from most of the major social encyclicals and Vatican II. Then I supplement this with materials from the Catholic Bishops' Conference and other non-magisterial writers. My concern is that the intellectual history of the development of CST might be less apparent if one relied solely on the Compendium. So, that's my two-cents on the issue that you raised on MOJ, for what it's worth."
In response to Tom's post ("[I]f Robertson is still seriously in the loop for Republicans on political issues, that's bad.")-- and perhaps just to correct this blog's alarming leftist tilt (smiley face here) -- it should be noted that: (1) Pat Robertson is a marginal figure in American politics, including in Republican circles, and has been for some time; (2) CNN, etc. know this full well, yet persist, in tediously predictable fashion, in pretending that "the story" is "prominent Republican calls for assassination"; (3) in fact, Robertson is no more prominent in the Republican party than some alarming leftist nut-jobs are in the Democratic Party (which, in my view, still makes him too prominent); and (4) the fact that Robertson was once a semi-successful presidential candidate (before, as Tom's post reminds us, some of his exceptionally loopy statements) is no more telling about the state of things on "the right" than the fact that wack-jobs Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton -- and Howard Dean and Michael Moore? -- played to rave reviews from the Democratic base during the last election.
Alright. Partisan rant over. Back to linking to left-leaning blogs, thereby confusing the blog aggregators.
Earlier posts by Michael P. and me on Pat Robertson have been tallied on Unpartisan, a "blog aggregator" that collects posts from political blogs concerning prominent issues. They divide blogs crudely into "from the left" and "from the right" (no category for "from the perspective of Catholic legal theory"), and they classify MOJ as from the left. One might think the algorithm producing the classification is based on features of the individual post: for example, on the occurrence of the words "evangelical" and "crackpot" within 12 words of each other (as happened in my post). But actually, according to Unpartisan's FAQ page, classification is of the whole site and "is determined by which types of blogs you link to and which link to you. If the majority of sites that link to you are known to be conservative and the majority of sites that you link to are known to be conservative, you get lumped in with the conservative blogs." This supposedly "tends to work close to 98% of the time" (an oddly-qualified sentence). Rick, Richard, Michael S., and other consistently right-minded MOJers: MOJ ends up on the left even though Rob and I try to help your stats by linking to blogs like Christianity Today and Evangelical Outpost. You better step up your linking! (Smiley face here.)
Andrew Sullivan notes with horror that someone as unbalanced in his views as Pat Robertson ran for President a couple of times and did quite well. If Robertson is still seriously in the loop for Republicans on political issues, that's bad. But there is a recognizable type in American politics, the person who runs a credible campaign for President and then goes loony and squanders all credibility afterwards. Here in Minnesota we have produced two of the great specimens, Harold Stassen for the Republicans and Eugene McCarthy for the Democrats -- both of whom ran a series of increasingly bizarre campaigns for office after their initial credible runs for the presidency.
Actually, this is all leading up to my recommending a fascinating book that I read early this summer, Eugene McCarthy and the Rise and Fall of Postwar American Liberalism (by Dominic Sandbrook, Anchor Books 2004, paperback ed. 2005). Some readers may already know, but I didn't, that McCarthy started out as a Catholic intellectual, teaching political theory at my own University (then College) of St. Thomas (after dropping out of an abbey and seminary) before going into politics. The author traces the varying effects of Catholic social thought on McCarthy, his first political incarnation (Catholic-inspired) as an anti-Communist liberal, and then the later permutations into anti-war candidate in 1968 and eventually, from the late 70s on, quack. The thesis of the book -- that, as suggested by the title, McCarthy's rise and decline are representative of the fortunes of American liberalism in the same period -- is enlightening, especially the idea that McCarthy 1968 marked a decisive shift of Democratic Party energy away from working-class issues and toward the reform emphases of upper-middle-class intellectuals. But the thesis that McCarthy is representative also sits awkwardly with the book's portrayal of McCarthy as unusually mercurial and anti-social, and concerned less with issues than with personal status and slights. At any rate, I commend the book to anyone interested in Catholic social thought and its relation to 20th-century American liberalism, the Democratic Party, etc.
I've added SSRN links to a few new papers (see the right-hand side of the screen), "American Conversations with(in) Catholicism" (a review of John McGreevy's wonderful book), and "Changing Minds: Proselytism, Religious Freedom, and the First Amendment." Comments and reactions are always welcome!
In response to Susan's question, I haven't studied the Compendium in depth, but my use of it thus far has led me to consider it an invaluable tool for quickly ascertaining the Church's social teaching on a given issue -- especially an issue with which we might be unfamiliar. Given its all-encompassing scope, however, it necessarily treats subjects with less depth than other sources, and its format would require a lot of skipping around from section to section to give students a sense of the necessary relationship between different components of the social teaching. As such, I'd be hesitant to substitute the Compendium for a papal encyclical in the classroom environment, although it could be valuable in providing students with a sense of the broader social teaching. The Compendium is helpful in communicating the social tradition; encyclicals (and other sources) are more helpful in allowing the reader to enter into the line of reasoning that has helped form the tradition. For students who come to these topics prepared to disagree with the Church, exposing them to the richness of the encyclicals is especially crucial, as they essentially enter into a seamless story, rather than encountering the social tradition as one might encounter the Restatement in Torts class. Students might still disagree with the Church's positions after reading an encyclical, but at least they will have experienced the foundations of those positions in all their fullness.
