Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Tradition, traditions, "traditional" . . . and marriage
An interesting piece by Andrew Haines over at Ethika Politika on (among other things) the use of the term "traditional" in our ongoing debate about the law of marriage. Alasdair MacIntyre is (as one would hope!) discussed. I have a sense that Haines might be giving short-shrift to Burkean-type arguments about tradition, innovations, revolutions, etc., but . . . it's just a sense. Take a look.
Rape in prisons
This New York Times editorial ("Curbing Rape Behind Bars") is worth a read, and worth thinking about. My wife served on the National Commission that was established by the Prison Rape Elimination Act, discussed in the piece. The problem is serious and our (generally speaking) indifference to it -- indeed, the extent to which we joke about it in movies, and even in 7-Up Commercials! -- is shameful. It is, in my view, immoral to impose on those convicted of even the most serious crimes more or worse punishment than is legally authorized by their offense, conviction, and sentence . . . and no one is sentenced to be raped in prison. If we lock someone up, we assume a moral responsibility for his or her safety (to the extent possible). However, it is clear that, in many institutions, rape is overlooked and tolerated by "corrections" officers who see it as (among other things) a useful way to maintain discipline. (To be sure, that maintaining discipline in our prisons is such a challenge, even for well-meaning, dedicated, and humane officers, is at least in part a result of severe overcrowding, which is at least in part a result of a misguided approach to the criminalization of drugs . . . .)
Monday, September 9, 2013
Social Justice, Economic Literacy, and the Minimum Wage
One of the challenges to achieving social justice by including a significant measure of government regulation of the private sector is to ensure that the secondary economic effects are considered in advance and do not threaten to undermine the primary effects sought to be achieved. Until recent years, the bishops in the United States had a tendency to endorse government-centric platforms for social justice with little attention to or awareness of economic incentives, disincentives, collateral consequences, etc. In more recent years, the bishops have appreciated the necessary prudential judgment that goes into evaluating the right mix of public and private, government and charitable, regulatory and market elements toward the end of reducing poverty and enhancing human thriving.
Yesterday's guest column on the economic consequences of increasing the minimum wages in the Minneapolis Star Tribune by Michael J. McIlhon, who teaches economics at Augsburg and Century Colleges here in the Twin Cities, ought to be required reading for anyone who aspires to "economic literacy" in public policy discussions.
McIlhon cites the "11th Commandment" in economics, which is "Thou shalt ever do only one thing." The point is that by doing one thing, one inevitably does another as well (and another and another). If the government mandates that employers provide health insurance to full-time employees, especially an expensive menu of prescribed coverage, while the result may be that some employees receive health care who did not have it previously, the other result will be that employers to remain competitive in labor costs will move more employees to part-time status and hire fewer full-time employees. If the government requires that employers provide guaranteed leave for health or childbirth reasons, fortunate employees may enjoy that new benefit, while the employer likely will have to make adjustments in benefits or salaries or in overall number of employees to offset that cost.
And if the government increases the minimum wage that must be paid to employees on the lowest end of the pay scale, who overwhelmingly are those with less education and lower skill sets, some employees will receive higher wages while other employees will be laid off and still other potential employees will never be hired. Indeed, as even advocates of a minimum wage generally must acknowledge, the calculation for the benefits to some of the increase always must include the number of jobs to be lost and not created as a consequence of increasing the cost of unskilled, low productivity labor.
Thus, while economists tend to differ about a lot of things, there is near unanimity that, as McIlhon describes it, "a minimum wage is a very bad antipoverty tool, poorly focused with some ugly side effects":
The National Bureau of Economic Research recently published work in which the authors find “no compelling evidence” that minimum wages raise household incomes. They found that the “disemployment effects” on some household incomes (the loss of a job or the inability to find a job at higher mandated wages) more than offset the income effects in other households of higher wages for those who manage to keep their jobs. Since both these effects are concentrated in lower-income households, the authors conclude that minimum wages simply redistribute income among low-income families, that they “help to raise the level of income above the poverty line in some families, but push income below the poverty line in others.”
Indeed, the problem with a raise in a minimum wage is worse than the immediate effect of simply redistributing income among the poor. By thereby suppressing the labor market for uneducated, low skill workers, many people and especially teenagers will be left unemployed and deprived of the experience and skills training of a low-wage job as "the first rung on the productivity ladder."
Again, you can read the rest of this lesson in economic literacy here.
Immigration and the Next America: Part I
In “Immigration and the Next America: Renewing the Soul of Our Nation,” Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez puts the immigration debate into the larger context of who we are as an American people. Immigration reform, he says, must be “part of an even more comprehensive reform – a project for American renewal aimed at forming a new national identity and civic culture dedicated to the universal values of promoting human dignity, freedom, and a community of the good.”
Gomez understands the frustration born of the lack of leadership in Washington on the immigration issue. He also sees immigration as a “flash point” over the “deeper anxieties” we feel about the future of our country. But, he sees cultural elites, not Hispanic immigrants, as the real threat to America’s future. America’s renewal requires challenging “the secularist, multicultural, and relativist consensus that in recent decades has taken hold among elite thinkers and opinion-shapers in our universities, cultural centers, and government.” Suspicious of our founders’ motives, these elites are “skeptical about the ideals of citizenship and integration around a common national identity,” preferring “a kind of anarchy of diversity” where no one has “obligations to anyone but themselves.”
The Archbishop offers a different vision: “We need to restore the ideal of citizenship based on integration and Americanization. Immigrants would be welcomed within a civic framework built on a common American story and universal values.” He would promote “broad expectations for citizens – including the understanding that individual rights presume common duties; and that freedom doesn’t mean doing whatever we want, but instead means doing what is true and beautiful and good.”
Tune in soon for Part II of this review: “The Forgotten Piece of the American Story.”
Sunday, September 8, 2013
Bartrum Reviews "The Tragedy of Religious Freedom"
Ian Bartrum (UNLV Law) has posted a very generous review of The Tragedy of Religious Freedom (forthcoming in the Journal of Church and State). I wish I could say that I disagreed with the sharp and smart criticisms of the book in Ian's review; but actually, I found myself quite in agreement with them. Still, I hope you will forgive me for quoting from a not-so-critical section:
DeGirolami's is a thoughtful and sophisticated meditation on the protean relationship between law and faith in a society committed to religious freedom. His intellectual and cultural influences are broad and rewarding; his style is rich and accessible; and his critique of both theoretical foundationalism and skepticism is profound and compelling. The Tragedy of Religious Freedom is an important book that will undoubtedly influence and enrich this discussion for years to come.
Saturday, September 7, 2013
The Use of Force: Fasting and Prayer
Pope Francis issued a letter on September 4 addressed to President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation who is hosting the G20 that has gathered at St. Petersburg for their periodic summit. [the letter is HERE]
The Holy Father follows the efforts of his predecessors of modern times beginning with Benedict XV (who was the Roman Pontiff during the First World War) who have exhorted the pursuit of peaceful means of resolving disputes—even disputes commenced by tyrants. It is important to recognize the international juridical elements of their pleas and how these Vicars of Christ, including Francis, emphasize uniform elements in their respective requests and pleas geared to avoiding the use of force. Their counsel brings a different dimension to the so-called Just War theory.
Interestingly, Pope Francis begins with a short discussion about economic issues, but as Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI have emphasized in a number of their respective annual World Day of Peace messages, economic issues have a direct role in the stabilization of peace or its disruption.
A second important element—a point emphasized by both Benedict XV and Pius XII in their respective interventions during the two world wars—is to search for and use peaceful means for resolving disputes, for they have a far better hope of maintaining a just peace than does the use of force.
A third point follows: Francis, like his predecessors, is not naïve about the use of force and its existence and practice in the contemporary age. Therefore, if force is regrettably used, all efforts must be exercised to ensure that those adversely affected by any use of force or military conflict be protected with the necessary humanitarian aid so those who are the victims of the use of this force will suffer minimally, if at all.
In the meantime, those of us who are able to do so are encouraged to fast and pray for the wisdom of God which is the most effective means of resolving disputes and of promoting a lasting reconciliation.
RJA sj
Friday, September 6, 2013
"All programmes of economic assistance aimed at financing campaigns of sterilization and contraception . . . are to be morally condemned as affronts to the dignity of the person and the family."
In reviewing the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church during my stroll through its discussion of “law,” I was reminded earlier this week of a passage that I encountered when I first began thinking about the contraceptives mandate currently being challenged in the federal courts. It is the second paragraph of no. 234, the opening sentence of which is the title of this post. Here is the whole number:
234. The judgment concerning the interval of time between births, and that regarding the number of children, belongs to the spouses alone. This is one of their inalienable rights, to be exercised before God with due consideration of their obligations towards themselves, their children already born, the family and society[528]. The intervention of public authorities within the limits of their competence to provide information and enact suitable measures in the area of demographics must be made in a way that fully respects the persons and the freedom of the couple. Such intervention may never become a substitute for their decisions[529]. All the more must various organizations active in this area refrain from doing the same.
All programmes of economic assistance aimed at financing campaigns of sterilization and contraception, as well as the subordination of economic assistance to such campaigns, are to be morally condemned as affronts to the dignity of the person and the family. The answer to questions connected with population growth must instead be sought in simultaneous respect both of sexual morals and of social ethics, promoting greater justice and authentic solidarity so that dignity is given to life in all circumstances, starting with economic, social and cultural conditions.
Is this aspect of Catholic teaching “out there” in the discussion of the HHS Mandate already, and I’ve just missed it? Or has the focus on individual conscience connected with how the legal claims have largely been framed and litigated thus far caused us to neglect the structural dimension of this issue? We do not need to choose between these two kinds of understanding of the problem in pressing for legal relief, and we should not. The problem with the HHS Mandate is not either/or, but both/and.
Reflections from the City of God: On the Miseries of Just Wars
I am blessed to be on sabbatical this semester. In addition to beginning several new writing projects, I
thought it might be good to take on some meaty reading projects. One of these projects will be to read through St. Augustine’s City of God and to become familiar with some of the secondary literature related specifically to his political thought. In connection with that project, I hope to post a weekly reflection from the City of God that is relevant to our discussion at the Mirror of Justice.
I’m confident that I will say nothing original about Augustine’s political thought. Indeed, I am sure that many readers of this blog know much more about Augustine than I will learn in these few months and well beyond that. I know that several writers here know more about Augustine than I ever will. But because I have been enjoying what I have read so far, and because what I have read relates in various ways to many of the questions we consider here, and because it may be a pleasure for readers to see some of Augustine’s words again before their eyes (and a pleasure for me to re-write them), and simply for the joy that comes in replowing well-tilled fields, I thought to give it a try. Those of our readers who are Augustine scholars or otherwise knowledgeable: please let me know in the comments what secondary literature I ought to be reading (my friends on MOJ have already been generous in this respect). I am reading the Marcus Dods translation (would that I could read it through in Latin, but as Dods–writing in 1871–said, “[T]here are not a great many men nowadays who will read a work in Latin of twenty-two books”).
Here is a passage from of the famous Book XIX on the miseries of war, including of just war:
But the imperial city has endeavored to impose on subject nations not only her yoke, but her language, as a bond of peace, so that interpreters, far from being scarce, are numberless. This is true; but how many great wars, how much slaughter and bloodshed, have provided this unity! And though these are past, the end of these miseries has not yet come. For though there have never been wanting, nor are yet wanting, hostile nations beyond the empire, against whom wars have been and are waged, yet, supposing there were no such nations, the very extent of the empire itself has produced wars of a more obnoxious description–social and civil wars–and with these the whole race has been agitated, either by the actual conflict or the fear of a renewed outbreak. If I attempted to give an adequate description of these manifold disasters, these stern and lasting necessities, though I am quite unequal to the task, what limit could I set? But, say they, the wise man will wage just wars. As if he would not rather lament the necessity of just wars, if he remembers that he is a man; for if they were not just he would not wage them, and would therefore be delivered from all wars. For it is the wrongdoing of the opposing party which compels the wise man to wage just wars; and this wrongdoing, even though it gave rise to no war, would still be matter of grief to man because it is man’s wrongdoing. Let everyone, then, who thinks with pain on all these great evils, so horrible, so ruthless, acknowledge that this is misery. And if anyone either endures or thinks of them without mental pain, this is a more miserable plight still, for he thinks himself happy because he has lost human feeling.
One striking feature of this paragraph is the ubiquity of misery in all matters related to war. The misery not only of the initial wrongdoing that leads to war, and not only of war itself, but also of the waging of just war in response to (in fact, ‘compelled’ by) the existence of miserably wrongful conduct. The misery of waging war, even in a just cause, and the misery of not doing so.
Inside the UN: Murphy Scholars Report from New York and Geneva
This semester, two UST Law students who are Murphy Institute Scholars will be blogging about their experiences as interns supporting the work of the the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See at the United Nations in New York and Geneva. Rachana Chhin will be blogging from New York, and Joseph Grodahl Bieve from Geneva. Joseph has been travelling to Geneva via Poland, and has already posted some fascinating observations about his visits to Kraków ("the archdiocese where Karol Wojtyła sat as archbishop before becoming Pope John Paul II"), Częstochowa ("a sort of spiritual capital of Poland"), and Auschwitz (where Joseph describes how he can feel "he darkness and evil of the place"). His perceptive remarks are accompanied by photos -- including of the cell where Fr. Maximilian Kolbe embraced his martyrdom.
Bookmark this blog, for what promise to be fascinating glimpses of the work of the Holy See at the U.N. during this semester!
Bottum's essay and "legal moralism"
Jody Bottum's Commonweal piece has attracted a fair bit of attention, criticism, praise, raised eyebrows, etc., during the last few weeks. I gather that he has tried to clarify or re-state a few things that, in the essay itself, were not said so well (e.g., his off-the-cuff and unwarranted dismissal of the argument that the Constitution does not require including same-sex relationships in the legal category of marriage).
I have read the essay twice. It is, as many have pointed out, very long and I think it is fair to say that it meanders and that its arguments are, at times, difficult to follow. Although the piece was billed as a "case for same-sex marriage," it's not clear to me that the essay was actually crafted or intended to make such a "case."
Initially, it seemed to me that, for purposes of this blog, what might be of particular interest in the piece is the connection between (what I think was) the author's point (i.e., those who embrace what the Church teaches about marriage should nevertheless accept, and abandon efforts to resist, revisions to the law's definition of marriage) and the longstanding debate / conversation about "legal moralism" and about the extent to which the demands, prohibitions, definitions, and categorizations of the positive law should track those of morality. (See generally, e.g., G. Kalscheur, "Moral Limits on Morals Legislation", here.) On this topic, I took Jody to be saying that because of certain things about our contemporary culture in the United States (including our views about sexuality and marriage generally), it no longer makes sense -- it will not, for much longer, be possible -- to insist or even expect that the positive law regarding the legal category of marriage track what the Church teaches (and, I think, Bottum still believes is true) about marriage.
So, is this true? I take it that Bottum believes that even if popular opinion swings dramatically toward the legalization of euthanasia, he (and the Church) should continue to oppose the legalization of euthanasia and should resist this legalization even after it happens. Why, in Jody's view, is this "case" different? Because of a distinction between "public" and "private" matters? Because euthanasia's legalization endangers the vulnerable while legal recognition of same-sex marriages does not? Because the Church and her bishops have credibility on dignity-of-life issues but not on matters relating to marriage and sexuality? For other reasons?
Bottum also suggested, I think, that, given all the cultural givens (the lack of "enchantment," etc.), it is almost anomalous for the law *not* to recognize same-sex marriages, that those who embrace the Church's teachings cannot reasonably expect this anomaly to continue, and that perhaps they should, instead, work on changing these cultural givens and -- thereby, eventually -- changing our practice of marriage. A question, though, is whether accepting, resigning to, or even endorsing the move toward legal recognition of same-sex marriage is actually likely to change these cultural givens or prompt changes in the practice of marriage -- to "re-enchant the world," as Bottum puts it. Or, as some fear, will this move be accompanied by intrusions on religious freedom, by unforeseen consequences, and by additional cultural changes that make the practice of marriage even more difficult?
As I thought and talked about the issue more, it started to seem to me that my "ah, we're talking about legal moralism!" reaction was itself a mistake. After all, as a friend pointed out, we are (almost) *always* talking, when we talk about what the content of the positive law should be, not about *whether* the positive law should reflect, teach, and / or enforce "morality," but about *which* views regarding the true, good, beautiful, and right the law should reflect, teach, and / or enforce. If this is right, Jody's essay is not of a piece with the misguided "you can't legislate morality" assertion that we often (oddly) hear in law-school classrooms, but is instead a call for "conservatives" to accept the fact that positive law of marriage is moving to reflect more accurately the moral views that, he thinks, are the ones that (for better or worse) increasingly, and perhaps already, animate our culture and practices. And, if *this* is really what Bottum was arguing -- and not that what the Church teaches about marriage and sexuality is wrong -- then it seems to me that the two primary counter-arguments will be (a) No, the positive law's apparent movement in that direction will not necessarily continue, in part because that movement is not, actually, consistent with the moral views that most people hold and want the positive law to reflect and / or (b) the positive law's movement in that direction should be resisted, even if it is consistent with the moral views that increasingly hold sway, because those moral views are misguided and need to be (charitably, effectively, etc.) challenged. Or . . . I could (still) be misreading the essay!
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