The AP reports on a speech given by Justice Alito yesterday in which he expressed frustration regarding persistent questions about having six Catholics on the Supreme Court. Our own Rick Garnett is quoted in the article expressing support for Alito's conviction that Catholic justices can be trusted to do their jobs. Rick says, "It's not the calling of a Catholic judge to enforce the teachings of the faith. It's the calling of a Catholic judge, as well as he or she can, to interpret and apply the laws of the political community." I agree with Rick's view, but I don't think everyone does. Roy Moore, Robert Cover, and Antonin Scalia (at least on the death penalty) come to mind.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Garnett on Catholic judges
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
March for Life in Spain
I feel confident that there's better coverage available elsewhere, but here is the BBC:
A broad cross-section of Spanish society were represented, says the BBC's Steve Kingstone in Madrid - old and young, parents with babies, priests, nuns, immigrant families and organised groups coached in from all over the country.
They gathered in the heart of Madrid under an enormous blue banner the height of a two-storey building emblazoned with the simple message: "Every life matters."
John Allen's (devastating) reply to Sarah Silverman
We've all heard it before -- something like, "why doesn't the Church sell all its fancy art and care for the poor?" etc. etc. Sarah Silverman is only the latest person (who is not as smart as he or she thinks he or she is) to imagine she's onto something new (as if the early Protestants didn't see the rhetorical potential in the attack). John Allen, five years ago, smacked down those who lob this lazy charge:
In the public’s imagination, the Vatican is awash in priceless art, hidden Nazi gold, plundered treasures from around the world, and vast assets tucked away from prying eyes in the Vatican Bank. Reality is far more prosaic. To put it bluntly, the Vatican is not rich. It has an annual operating budget of $260 million, which would not place it on any Top 500 list of major social institutions. To draw a comparison in the non-profit sector, Harvard University has an annual operating budget of a little over $1.3 billion, which means it could run the equivalent of five Vaticans every year and still have pocket change left over. The Holy See’s budget would qualify it as a mid-sized American Catholic college. It’s bigger than Loyola-Marymount in Los Angeles (annual budget of $150 million) or Saint Louis University ($174 million), but substantially less than the University of Notre Dame ($500 million).
The total patrimony of the Holy See, meaning its property holdings (including some 30 buildings and 1,700 apartments in Rome), its investments, its stock portfolios and capital funds, and whatever it has storied up in a piggy bank for a rainy day, comes to roughly $770 million. This is substantial, but once again one has to apply a sense of scale. What the Holy See calls “patrimony” is roughly what American universities mean by an “endowment” – in other words, funds and other assets designed to support the institution if operating funds fall short. The University of Notre Dame has an endowment of $3.5 billion, meaning a total 4.5 times as great as the Vatican’s.
But what of the some 18,000 artistic treasures in the Holy See, such as the Pietà, that don’t show up on these ledgers? From the Holy See’s point of view, these artworks are part of the artistic heritage of the world, and may never be sold or borrowed against. Michelangeo’s famous Pieta statue, the Sistine Chapel, or Raphael’s famous frescoes in the Apostolic Palace are thus listed at a value of 1 Euro each. In fact, those treasures amount to a net drain on the Holy See’s budget, because millions of Euros have to be allocated every year for maintenance and restoration.
"The Persecution of Belmont Abbey"
Charlotte Allen is on the case, in The Weekly Standard. (For another MOJ treatment of this case, go here.)
The implications for religious liberty in the EEOC's newly-arrived-at decision to ignore the good-faith beliefs of a religious institution closely affiliated with a religious order (Benedictines still do much of the teaching at Belmont Abbey) are obvious. "This is the first time that an unelected bureaucrat has expounded a novel -theory of law in this fashion and applied it to a 150-year-old small religious college in North Carolina," Eric Kniffin, legal counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which has taken on Belmont Abbey's case, told me in a telephone interview. Right now the college has the option of trying to arrive at a mutually satisfactory "conciliation" with the EEOC and, if those efforts fail, bringing a lawsuit against the commission. Neither Belmont Abbey nor the EEOC will discuss the current status of, or provide further details about, what sort of negotiations might be taking place. . . .
I am proud to say that Eric Kniffin is a graduate of Notre Dame Law School. Go, Becket, go!
Blomquist, Tillman, et al. on the Founders and Religion
Prof. Blomquist comments (link) on some recent work by Seth Tillman (here) and Geof Stone:
In this Essay, Professor Blomquist responds to the remarks of Seth Tillman, which critiqued an article by Professor Geoffrey Stone on whether or not the Founders contemplated a “Christian Nation."
We Americans—We the People—relish our national Constitution and delight in the game of constitutional interpretation. The game of American constitutional interpretation recalls the complexity and nuance of other great games like the Glass Bead Game and Chess. In never-ending iterations about the meaning of our Constitution we pontificate and debate about intellectual antecedents, historical background, provisions of the Constitution, ratification, contemporary exigencies, and much more.
Seth Barrett Tillman has provided constitutional law “gamers” with two hard-hitting legal think pieces—one, a full-blown article in Penn State Law Review, the other, an abridged version of that article in Cardozo Law Review De Novo—evaluating and critiquing Professor Geoffrey R. Stone’s Melville B. Nimmer Memorial Lecture and Essay published in the UCLA Law Review. In this modest and concise Essay, I seek to praise Tillman’s intellectual virtues (while empathizing, in part, with Professor Stone). My pivoting gambit and larger purpose, however, is to urge legal scholars, jurists and lawyers to strive for what I call contextual constitutional intelligence in playing the vital game of interpreting our American Constitution.
The reconciliation begun by Mary Tudor and Reginald Cardinal Pole advances
This morning, the Holy See and the Archbishop of Canterbury made two important announcements, [HERE] and [HERE]. It is expected that Pope Benedict XVI will be issuing in due course an Apostolic Constitution that will prepare the way for amending the Church’s law to bring into communion with the Roman Catholic Church certain members of the Anglican Communion. While the impact of this communiqué will develop over the ensuing months, it is clear at this stage that some of our discussions here at the Mirror of Justice will be enhanced. As they say in the media business, more at eleven…
RJA sj
Coming to your local bookstore, soon ...
... and sure to cause heartburn in certain precincts.
Check it out, here.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Religious Freedom, Moral Freedom: The Final Exam Question
Brian Leiter argues, here, that there is no good reason to privilege religious freedom over moral freedom (though BL does not use the latter term).
Michael Perry argues, here, that given the best--in the sense of most ecumenical--argument for privileging religious freedom, liberal democracy should also privilege moral freedom.
1. Do BL and MP converge in their conclusions?
2. If so, do their arguments in support of that conclusion differ--and if so, how?
3. If their arguments differ, which is the better argument in the context of the dominant religious &/or moral convictions and commitments of the citizenry of the United States? Please explain.
Latest Law-Prof-Blog rankings. Nutshell: MOJ-love is spreading like wildfire
Or, at least, that's how I choose to interpret Prof. Caron's latest rankings. Only two blogs out of the "top 35" saw a larger percentage-change in hits and page-views over the past year than we did. No doubt, it is the new blue banner.
Tell your friends! Spread the word!
Mary Ann Glendon on the "Greatest Grassroots Movement of Our Times"
Prof. Mary Ann Glendon's lecture, given on the occasion of her recent receipt of a well deserved reward, is available here, at the First Things blog. A bit:
One of the main reasons for our slow but steady progress, I believe, is the success of the pro-life movement in demonstrating by word and deed that our position on protection of the unborn is inseparable from our dedication to compassion and assistance for women who are so often the second victims of abortion.
Unlike the movement that calls itself pro-choice, the prolife movement has thought deeply about choice. We know that choices last: We know that individual choices make us into a certain of person; and we know that collective choices make us into a certain kind of society.
Indeed. Congratulations, and thank you, to Prof. Glendon.
Recent Posts
Categories
Monthly Archive
StatCounter
PageViews
Since February 19, 2008
