I apologize for my light blogging as of late, but I'm spending the month at Oxford trying to finish a manuscript and, well, the distractions of this fine city (namely big old libraries and small old pubs) are so enticing as to crowd out most everything else. I do want to call attention to a fascinating new project by Charles Camosy, "Peter Singer and Christian Ethics." I had the opportunity to participate in a colloquium on Camosy's manuscript this morning, and there will be a two-day conference on the project here beginning tomorrow. Camosy tries to push through the caricature of Singer and show that his work should be taken seriously by Christians, while pushing through the caricature of Christian ethics to show that the tradition should be taken seriously by Singer and his utilitarian sympathizers. Kicking off the book with abortion, Camosy shows that the disagreement between Singer and Christian ethics is narrower than assumed. He writes:
Both agree that, assuming that a fetus is a person, the supposed unintended negative effects of making abortion illegal would not justify its continuing to be legal. Both agree that a constitutional (rather than a legislative) approach to abortion is a mistake. Both agree that one has a moral duty to support a fetus for nine months -- again, if the fetus is a person. Both have non-speciesist definitions of personhood. And both see a logical connection between one's view of abortion and one's view of infanticide. Their very narrow disagreement is with regard to what role, if any, potential should play in the moral status of the fetus. Both approaches agree that passive potential (or mere probability) adds nothing to the moral status of an entity, but the Church's position is that any being of a rational nature -- that is, a being with active potential for personhood -- counts as a person. Indeed, it is difficult to make sense of the claim that severely mentally disabled human beings (especially if they have been so from birth) are persons, to say nothing of the mildly comatose or even the asleep, without an appeal to the active natural potential of such individuals. If the argument of this chapter is correct, then SInger's claim that a woman's interests always outweigh the interests of a fetus is false.
I'm not sure if this disagreement on the moral significance of "potential" is best termed "narrow," rather than "singular." I could just as easily characterize the difference as a "gaping chasm." In any event, the chapter is a helpful distillation of the real and imagined tensions between Singer and Christian ethics.
On the moral status of non-human animals, Camosy criticizes the Christian community for hypocrisy in supporting factory farms and (in many circumstances) the eating of meat, and notes that the Christian tradition has richer resources for addressing these issues than Singer's utilitarianism offers. He writes:
[Singer] finds it difficult to condemn the wanton slaughter of certain animals . . . in a way which doesn't violate their interests -- perhaps by painlessly killing a non-self-aware creature with no capacity to have an interest in continuing to live, for example. But the Christian tradition -- which can appeal to the intrinsic goodness of non-human animals apart from human beings, the telos of all members of the created order, the spiritual reality of non-human animals, and the morally problematic nature of the (often vicious and violent) act of snuffing out a non-human animal's life -- has resources to condemn practices that Singer does not.
This chapter alone will be worth the price of the book, as it both rattles the my own Christian conscience while showing significant shortcomings in Singer's capacity to pursue the cause with which he is most closely identified. Camosy also addresses euthanasia, duties to the poor, and ethical theory. On this last topic, Camosy notes that Singer seems to operate with some conception of objective truth because he ranks some preferences as more worthy of satisfaction that others. I'm no expert on Singer, but I'm not sure whether this leads Singer to objective truth, or whether he is simply ranking preferences that maximize the individual's ability to choose over other options. It's a fascinating question to finish the book with, and it suggests the possibility of further development in Singer's work that may bring him even closer to Christian ethics on some important issues.
Look for the book sometime next year -- it is well worth reading and should spark many productive conversations.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
If you're going to be (or aspire to be) in Paris in July, check out this fascinating conference on the Dreyfus Affair being organized by Touro Law.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Over at Public Discourse, Matthew Franck has posted an essay lamenting King & Spalding's decision to withdraw from its defense of DOMA (discussed on MoJ here and here). He writes:
[I]ntimidation—“mau-mauing the flak-catchers,” Tom Wolfe memorably called it—is now the default tactic of same-sex marriage advocates. What else, for instance, explains the antics of now-retired federal judge Vaughn Walker, who wanted to broadcast the Proposition 8 trial in California, and then broke his promise—and his legal duty—to keep the trial’s video record from public view? What else explains the instantaneous denunciation of all opponents of same-sex marriage as “haters”? Resistance to such intimidation, in the name of the ethic of institutional integrity, is fast becoming the duty of all persons in positions of institutional responsibility, whatever their private views on homosexuality or same-sex marriage. When we witness such principled resistance, as in the case of Dean Evan Caminker’s decision to stick with Ohio Senator and alumnus Rob Portman as the commencement speaker at the University of Michigan’s law school—despite the outcry of those who object to Portman’s 1996 vote for DOMA as a House member—we should applaud it heartily.
Yes, we should applaud institutional resistance to intimidation heartily, but I think we need to pause and acknowledge that maintaining institutional openness to both sides of the SSM debate depends on a substantive analysis of that debate and an ability / willingness to distinguish it from other civil rights debates. Sometimes we applaud when institutional legitimacy has been withheld from positions that were once deemed plausible, even mainstream. Today we would not as readily embrace a law firm that devotes its time (especially at a discounted billing rate) to defending the constitutionality of an anti-miscegenation law, nor would we deem prudent a law school's decision to invite David Duke to serve as its commencement speaker, even if he was an alum. My point is not that inviting Rob Portman to speak is the same as inviting David Duke to speak; my point is that we need to be able to explain the difference in terms that are accessible to, and that resonate with, institutions; this is no easy task, for (most) institutions have a hard time engaging with moral norms beyond those of nondiscrimination and individual liberty.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Jeremy Waldron keeps producing a treasure trove of work on topics at the heart of the MoJ conversation. Here's his latest, from recent lectures at Princeton's James Madison Program, titled A Religious View of the Foundations of International Law. From the abstract:
Lecture 1 begins the task of considering law beyond the state from a specifically Christian point of view, though it also addresses the difficulties of sustaining a viewpoint of this kind in a multi-faith and indeed increasingly secular world. Lecture 2 considers nationhood, sovereignty, and the basis for the division of the world into separate political communities. Clearly a religious approach to order in the international realm will endorse the position of most modern international jurists that sovereign independence is not to be made into an idol or a fetish, and that the tasks of order and peace in the world are not to be conceived as optional, which sovereigns may or may not support at their pleasure. At the same time, sovereigns have their own mission, ordering particular communities of men and women; and this task, too, should not be slighted. Finally Lecture 3 will consider the rival claims of natural law and positivism in regard to the sources of international law Natural law is no doubt important in any Christian jurisprudence. But the most telling part of natural law jurisprudence from Aquinas to Finnis has always been its insistence on the specific human need for positive law. This holds true in the international realm as much as in any realm of human order - perhaps more so, because in the international realm law has to do its work unsupported by the overwhelming power of a particular state. So this final lecture will address, from a religious point of view, the sources of law in the international realm: treaty, convention, custom, precedent, and jurisprudence. It will focus particularly on the sanctification of treaties.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Joe Carter reflects on the question that has haunted conscientious evangelicals for more than 100 years. I post it here for two reasons: 1) to express thanks for the fact that, while many questions haunt conscientious Catholics, this is not one of them; and 2) I have an excuse to bring up my favorite explanation of how Jesus was a teetotaler: the unfermented wine theory.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Talking Points Memo has more background on King & Spalding's decision to drop the DOMA defense. This part jumped out at me:
Sources with knowledge of the backlash confirm that one of King & Spalding's top clients, Coca Cola, also based in Atlanta, directly intervened to press the firm to extricate itself from the case.
Maybe I'm wrong, but it doesn't seem to me that clients have traditionally chosen their lawyers based on the moral standing of the lawyers' other clients. I do support lawyers making moral decisions about the cases they'll take -- or more accurately, acknowledging the moral dimension of those decisions, which is present whether or not they admit it -- and I suppose it's only natural that the moral accountability extends to other clients, but law firms need to be careful here. Coca-Cola's objective is to avoid offending anyone; if lawyers adopt this by giving in too easily to client demands, they will have abandoned a key quality of the lawyer's traditional role: the willingness to offend.
Should the transgendered be permitted to marry? Texas is apparently on verge of saying "no." From a Catholic perspective, how should the secular law respond to a transgendered person's desire to marry? The Church's position (I think) is that gender is not susceptible to reassignment through surgical procedures. As such, let's say a person born a man but living as a woman after surgery desires to marry a man. Would the Church deny that marriage (as essentially a same-sex union) but affirm the person's marriage to a woman (which would be, judging by outward appearances, a same-sex union)? How should a Catholic advise the Texas legislature on this issue?
Monday, April 25, 2011
Today superstar appellate lawyer Paul Clement resigned from King & Spalding after the firm withdrew as counsel representing the U.S. House of Representatives in defending the Defense of Marriage Act. I assume that the firm feared financial blowback from taking on a case like this, much as Ropes & Gray feared being hurt on the hiring front for its decision to help Catholic Charities find a way around the Massachusetts law forbidding discrimination against same-sex couples as adoptive parents. Though I would defend both of these representations, I reject the suggestion that lawyers are somehow beyond moral reproach for the cases and causes to which they devote themselves. There is a moral dimension to accepting a representation. Justifying the representation does not mean that the case or client itself has to be morally justified; there is a moral case to be made for the profession's long tradition of defending unpopular causes. We are, and should be, morally accountable for how we spend (and don't spend) our time -- there is nothing wrong with calling lawyers out for their decisions in that regard. (I think it's a different story entirely when a government official calls lawyers out.) The best response to such criticisms is not to pretend that morality has nothing to do with it, thereby feeding into the lawyer-as-amoral-technician paradigm, but to offer a moral defense of the decision.
