The latest issue of the Cornell Law Review has some very interesting-looking papers on Property, obligation, and virtue by, inter alia, my friend and natural-rights expert Eric Claeys, and our own Eduardo Penalver. Check it out.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Property and Virtue
Peter Lawler's reflections on the killing-off (for now?) of the President's Council on Bioethics
Here. He concludes:
The rule of experts might be fine if they were philosopher-kings who had united in themselves not only technological power but perfect wisdom. But of course, it's much more clear that the human power over nature and human nature is growing faster than is our wisdom to use it well for authentically human purposes. The experts, we have to remember, very often hide their own personal opinions and ideological agendas behind their impersonal claims to merely be following what the studies say. We can learn from them, but as long as they fall short of perfect objectivity based on perfect wisdom, we shouldn't trust them. These days, the people, above all, should distrust meddlesome, schoolmarmish judges and bureaucrats (and presidents who enable them) who want to deprive them of the capacity of thinking for themselves.
Is the abortion debate over?
Micah Watson has some thoughts, here, at Public Discourse:
The lines of disagreement in the philosophical debate over abortion have never been clearer. While the politics of abortion remain as tumultuous and contested as they have ever been, the underlying philosophical, ethical, and scientific issues have been clarified to the extent that any careful person can examine the arguments of both sides and come to a principled and informed position.
This has not always been the case. . . .. . . the philosophical debate about the normative dimensions of the abortion issue still comes down to the aforementioned watershed difference: either human beings as such have a right to life, or some human beings have a right to life and are thus persons, and some are not and are thus expendable.
While pro-life philosophers must continue their work by applying principles to emerging bioethical questions, the argumentative clarity achieved by their work in the abortion debate has implications for pro-lifers who seek to continue to influence both the law and the culture. Perhaps the most important implication is also the most obvious. If the philosophical debate about abortion is over, the political debate remains.
Thoughts?
Live in Indiana? Read this!
The Indiana General Assembly is currently considering an important school choice program as part of its 2010 budget bill. The Indiana School Scholarship Tax Credit plan would create a state tax credit for donations by corporations and individuals to scholarship programs helping lower-income families send their children to the private or public school of their choice.
The innovative program is designed to encourage private contributions for scholarship funds for low-income families to choose the public or private K-12 school of their choice.
Thousands of Hoosier families desperately want new educational opportunities for their children. They see the opportunity to do something remarkable for their child’s future by choosing a better school, but they can’t afford the tuition.
Right now, the Indiana School Scholarship Tax Credit plan is being considered by state legislators as part of the state budget. You can help to provide school choices by asking your state legislators to support this modest, innovative program.
More here. . . .
God, Philosophy, Universities
I am reading Alasdair MacIntyre's new book, "God, Philosophy, Universities: A Selective History of the Catholic Philosophical Tradition." Check it out. It's conversational and accessible, but also provocative and profound.
Zamir and Medina on Public and Private Morality
Two Hebrew University law profs have posted a new paper, "Public and Private Morality," that may be of interest to MoJ readers. Here's the abstract:
This is a chapter of a book titled Law, Economics, and Morality, which proposes to integrate threshold deontological constraints (and options) with cost-benefit analysis, thus combining economic methodology with deontological morality (forthcoming, Oxford University Press). The chapter addresses the argument that even if moderate deontology is the correct moral theory for individuals, consequentialism is the appropriate moral theory for legal policymakers such as legislators, judges, and regulators, and for academic policy-analysts. It claims that this argument confuses, among other things, between constraints and options and between the actor’s perspective and the perspective of an external reviewer. It ultimately rejects the alleged dichotomy between personal and public morality.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Saints John Fisher and Thomas More
It strikes me that today -- the Feast of Saints John Fisher and Thomas More -- the Church invites us to reflect on two Catholics whose llives and witnesses could not be more relevant to this blog's project. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I've been watching Showtime's (somewhat trashy, but entirely enjoyable) series "The Tudors," and have been surprised -- almost stunned -- by the extent to which the show's producers are framing Henry's revolution as a power-grab by secular authority. In our context, the (whiggish?) interpretation of that revolution -- i.e., it was part of a larger Protestant-led liberation of the individual conscience from Church authority and constraint -- is so often uncritically parrotted and promulgated. The lives and martyrdoms of Fisher and More remind us, though, that the Church was (and still must be) an institutional center of non-state authority, if individual freedom is to be secure from arbitrary state power.
Here is a bit from "The Tudors", regarding More's martyrdom. More is, I think, very well portrayed.
Procreation and Homosexuality: A question
Michael P. posted an abstract to an article subtitled Same-Sex Couples and the Rhetoric of Accidental Procreation. In the article, the authors argue that same-sex couples "only procreate after considerable effort and forethought." I have a serious question that will appear like a smart-ass question. Can same-sex couples ever "procreate"?
Procreation and the Battle Over "Marriage"
Rob Vischer called our attention to David Novak's piece on same-sex marriage (here). As I read Novak's piece, I was reminded of a different piece I read recently, in the current issue of the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities (vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 1-35): Kerry Abrams and Peter Books, Marriage as a Message: Same-Sex Couples and the Rhetoric of Accidental Procreation. (Abrams is an associate professor of law at the University of Virginia, and Brooks is Sterling Professor of Comparative Literature at Yale.) The abstract:
In
his dissent in the 2003 case Goodridge v. Department of Health, Justice
Robert Cordy of the Massachusetts Supreme Court introduced a novel
argument in support of state bans on same-sex marriage: that marriage
is an institution designed to create a safe social and legal space for
accidental heterosexual reproduction, a space that is not necessary for
same-sex couples who, by definition, cannot accidentally reproduce.
Since 2003, every state appellate court considering a same-sex marriage
case has adopted Justice Cordy’s dissent until the recent California
Supreme Court decision In Re Marriage Cases. In case after case, courts
have held that marriage allows states to send a message
to potentially irresponsible procreators that 'marriage is a
(normatively) necessary part of their procreative endeavor' and that
same-sex couples do not need marriage because they only procreate after
considerable effort and forethought. This article examines the
accidental procreation argument through the lenses of anthropological
theory, history, literature, and constitutional law. We conclude that
marriage has sometimes been used to channel male heterosexuality into
reproduction, but to argue that this goal is the sine qua non of
marriage is to vastly oversimplify its history in both law and culture.
We then undertake a genealogy of the accidental procreation argument
and speculate about its possible effects on the institution of
marriage. We suggest that if courts continue to insist upon a
definition of marriage that is so distinct from the actual practice of
the institution, the law may actually be less and less influential in
regulating intimate behavior.
[The paper can be downloaded here.]
In this article, "Why Care About Caregivers: Using Communitarian Theory to Justify Protection of "Real Workers," Nicole Porter presents a communitarian theory of greater support for caregivers. From the abstract below, it certainly sounds very compatible with the Catholic theory for the same that I have offered in some of my articles.
Both law and theory have failed to solve the caregiver conundrum for employees who experience conflicts between work and caring for their families. I call these employees “real” workers in contrast to what most employers expect of their employees, the somewhat mythical “ideal” workers, who never miss work or need time off for caregiving responsibilities. This Article proposes using the communitarian theory to justify protection of all caregivers in the workplace, including real workers. Communitarian theory’s emphasis on the priority of responsibilities over rights, the value of raising children well, and the importance of working together to reach a common goal provides the necessary justification for supporting broad reform efforts aimed at ending the caregiver conundrum for all caregivers, both real and ideal workers. This Article argues that communitarian theory justifies protection of real workers by overcoming two common hurdles to comprehensive reform for working caregivers. First, communitarian theory counters the rhetoric of choice by explaining that caregiving is a responsibility, not merely a choice. Second, this theory reduces the stigma of special treatment in the workplace by emphasizing the importance and benefit to all of society when parents raise their children well. Thus, a turn to communitarian theory can combat both the apathy and resentment of employers and co-workers alike. Put another way, communitarian theory explains why we should care about caregiving
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