There has been much buzz about Spain's decision to grant limited rights to apes, much of it favorable. (Stephen Colbert, it bears noting, was skeptical, insisting the new law better not give apes "the right not to wear a tuxedo and roller skates.") Two pieces appeared in the New York Times, and William Saletan chimes in on Slate. An excerpt:
Secular humanists reject this dogma [that humans have souls but animals do not]. We understand that there's something wonderful and uniquely worthy of respect in the power, richness, and subtlety of the human mind. But to us, the soul doesn't explain these wonders. It describes them. That's one reason why the destruction of human embryos doesn't torment us the way it torments pro-lifers. We don't believe in ensoulment at conception. We believe in the gradual development of mental capacities.
This puts us in an awkward position. We call ourselves egalitarians, yet we deny the equality of conceived humans. We believe that a woman deserves more respect than a fetus. A 26-week fetus deserves more respect than a 12-week fetus. A 12-week fetus deserves more consideration than a zygote. We discriminate according to ability. This is also why ape rights appeals to us. It's not a claim of equality among all animals. It's a claim that apes resemble us in ways that insects don't.
This whole issue raises lots of questions for me: Is a belief in the human soul secularly accessible? Does it need to be to justify the rejection of animal rights? Can we embrace animal rights without embracing the corresponding belief that rights are simply a function of demonstrated mental capacity? Does recognizing the ape's rights make it less likely that we'll recognize the rights of a severely disabled infant (much less fetus)? My own initial reaction is that, while I would support legislation aimed at minimizing the unnecessary suffering of apes (or other animals whose highly developed mental capacities make them especially vulnerable to pain or loneliness), I would prefer that the legislation be framed in terms of humans' stewardship responsibilities, rather than in terms of animals as rights-bearing agents. Thoughts?
Monday, July 14, 2008
Tom Colby has posted a paper that might be of interest to MoJ readers, The Federal Marriage Amendment and the False Promise of Originalism. Here's the abstract:
This Article approaches the originalism debate from a new angle - through the lens of the recently defeated Federal Marriage Amendment. There was profound and very public disagreement about the meaning of the FMA - in particular about the effect that it would have had on civil unions. The inescapable conclusion is that there was no original public meaning of the FMA with respect to the civil unions question. This suggests that often the problem with originalism is not just that the original public meaning of centuries-old provisions of the Constitution is hard to find (especially by judges untrained in history). The problem is frequently much more fundamental, and much more fatal; it is that there was no original public meaning to begin with. It is a natural consequence of the constitution-making process that a constitutional provision addressing a deeply controversial subject can only be enacted when it is drafted with highly ambiguous language so that, rather than possessing a single original meaning, it appeals to disparate factions with divergent understandings of its terms. As such, the central premise of originalism - that, in Justice Scalia's words, the Constitution was enacted with a fixed meaning ascertainable through the usual devices familiar to those learned in the law - is often inaccurate. And for that reason, the central promise of originalism - that, by relying on an objective, discoverable, fixed constitutional meaning, originalism can prevent judges from subverting democracy and the rule of law by reading their personal values into the Constitution - is a false one.
Larry Solum and Colby debate the paper's claims here.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Gerald Russello has provided a nice short introduction to the (often overlooked) work of American Catholic political theorist Orestes Brownson.
At the wonderful religion-and-media blog, Get Religion, there is an interesting discussion of Tim Russert's Catholic faith and how it shaped his journalism, including a recent talk on that topic by NBC anchor Brian Williams and an excerpt of Russert's repeated pushing of Al Gore to answer the question, "When do you believe life begins?" My favorite quote is from Williams, who said that Russert's faith "was not the elephant in the room. It was the room."
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Over at Legal Ethics Forum, San Diego law prof David McGowan has kicked off an interesting and provocative discussion on the meaning of human dignity (or lack thereof) and the role of moral considerations in the attorney-client relationship.
UPDATE: I responded here; I welcome comments.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Writing in Time, Nancy Gibbs asks us to give the Gloucester girls a break, noting that there is conflicting evidence over whether the 17 high schoolers decided together to get pregnant, or whether they decided together to have their babies after learning that they were pregnant. She also notes:
While 750,000 teens become pregnant every year, that number is at its lowest level in 30 years, according to the Guttmacher Institute, down 36% from a peak in 1990. This does not suggest that we are witnessing a mass moral collapse, especially since abortion rates have fallen even faster. According to the CDC, since the late 1980s the abortion rate for girls 15 to 17 fell by 55%, and this year the overall US abortion rate was at its lowest level since 1974.
So maybe the Gloucester girls are indicative of a larger trend:
I wonder if some soft message has taken hold, when the data suggests that more and more women facing hard choices are deciding to carry the child to term. This has been the mission of the crisis pregnancy center movement, the more than 4000 centers and hotlines and support groups around the country that aim to talk women out of having abortions and offer whatever support they can. If not in Hollywood then certainly in Gloucester, teen parents and their babies face long odds against success in life. Surely they deserve more sympathy and support than shame and derision, if the trend they reflect is not a typical teenager's inclination to have sex, but rather a willingness to take responsibility for the consequences.
