Within Eduardo's category 3 (bedrock principles), I don't have difficulty seeing the compatibility of authority and scholarly inquiry from the Noonan perspective, but I'm not sure how it works from the Dulles perspective. If one doubts the capacity for change within the Magisterium, what happens if one's scholarly pursuits lead to a conclusion in conflict with the Magisterium, assuming that this conclusion remains firm after substantial reflection and consultation? Is the Catholic scholar's proper course to keep silent as to the conclusion? If so, it seems that we're not simply talking about the problem of a scholar's subjectively embraced conclusions being effectively "preordained." Instead, we're talking about the usual path of scholarly inquiry being short-circuited in a way that removes the scholar's subjectively embraced conclusions from public discourse through a type of self-censorship. That's a significantly different understanding of scholarship, it seems.
While we're on the topic of challenging questions posed by Eduardo, several weeks ago he asked why we speak metaphorically when referring to the bride of Christ, but literally when we speak of the bridegroom. (The full post is here.) I don't think anyone has responded, at least on MoJ, so I'll throw it out there again.
Rob
Monday, April 17, 2006
William & Mary law prof Erin Ryan has posted her new article, Federalism, Subsidiarity, and the Tug of War Within: How the New Federalism Failed Katrina Victims, and What We Can Learn. From the abstract:
By failing to anticipate the "interjurisdictional gray area" of state and federal regulatory concern, New Federalism idealism dangerously subordinates the subtle problem-solving values that have historically counterbalanced the critical check-and-balance values of traditional American ("Old") federalism. Taken to its extreme, the New Federalism would obstruct interjurisdictional problem-solving by effectively assigning jurisdiction over a matter that implicates both local and national expertise to either state or federal agents, mutually exclusively, and then zealously guarding the designated boundary against defensible (even desirable) crossover by the other. While strictly segregating local from national regulatory authority would serve the critical "check-and-balance" purpose of Old Federalism, it would also undermine other underlying principles. In addition to the anti-tyranny value of checks and balances, Old Federalism operates from the premise of subsidiarity, or the principle that regulation take place at the most local level of government with actual capacity. The principle of subsidiarity partners a preference for localized decisionmaking (to promote diversity of preferences and regulatory competition) with a reasonable expectation for capacity in regulatory problem-solving.
Rob
