Mirror of Justice

Bishops Welcome Proposed Rule to Protect Rights of Religious Employers

The chairmen of three U.S. bishops’ committees Aug. 21 welcomed a proposed rule from the U.S. Department of Labor aimed at clarifying religious protections that may be invoked by federal contractors, including faith-based organizations.

“Faith-based groups should have the opportunity to compete on a level playing field as they seek to partner with the federal government to provide critical social services,” the bishops said in a statement. “These proposed rules protect religious liberty, a core constitutional right, by clarifying existing religious exemptions consistent with federal law and recent Supreme Court precedent.”

The proposed rule would clarify that religious organizations may make employment decisions “consistent with their sincerely held religious tenets and beliefs without fear of sanction by the federal government,” the Labor Department said in announcing it Aug. 14. The proposal was issued by the department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, known as OFCCP.

Full article at Crux

Weigel on the Pell verdict

Over at First Things, George Weigel has these comments about the recent (split) decision affirming the sex-abuse conviction of Cardinal George Pell.  I realize there are those who claim that skepticism about the fairness of the proceedings against Cardinal Pell simply reflects ideological or ecclesiological agreement with him, but this claim is misplaced.  As a former criminal-defense lawyer, and as one who has been teaching Criminal Law for 20 years, I am committed, across the board, to the deeply rooted and foundationally important rule that imposes an exceptionally demanding burden of proof on the government before a criminal conviction.  I do not believe that burden was met here, or that any reasonable, unbiased factfinder could have concluded that it was.  That "something might have happened" or even that "something probably happened" (and, to be clear, I am not saying I believe that either of these is the case here) is not, and should not be, enough, in the criminal context.

Maryland Case Reveals Religious Discrimination in Education

This op-ed by Neal McCluskey of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom details a current form of discrimination in Maryland. As noted in the op-ed:

If government says that you are free to believe in something, but not to act on it, you are not truly free. That reality lies at the heart of a federal lawsuit filed by the Bethel Christian Academy against the state of Maryland, which kicked the academy out of a private school voucher program for having policies consistent with the school’s religious values. Such unequal treatment is unacceptable. 

 

Immediately at issue are the school’s policies requiring that students and staff behave in ways consistent with the idea of marriage being between a man and a woman, and an individual’s proper gender being the one assigned at birth. The state maintains that those policies are discriminatory against LGBTQ individuals and that allowing public money — school vouchers from the state’s BOOST program — to flow to Bethel Christian is unacceptable.

 

The state’s position is totally understandable: All people should be treated equally when government is involved. The problem is that the state government is not treating religious people equally – a problem in the public education system not just in Maryland, but in every state in the country.

Religious schools need the ability to act on their religious principles without being cut off from choice programs. More than 482,000 students across the country are exercising private school choice.  As McCluskey points out, the Maryland policy now essentially says that educators and parents may pick a school consistent with their faith, but as a practical matter that faith must be dead.

USCIRF Commissioner Calls for Release of Religious Prisoner of Conscience

WASHINGTON, DC – United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) Commissioner Tenzin Dorjee today called on Chinese authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Gulmira Imin, a Uighur Muslim detained in 2009. Ms. Imin was a web administrator for the Uighur-language website Salkin.

“The extreme and unjust sentence imposed on Gulmira Imin foreshadowed the mass internment and other forms of persecution we see today against Uighur Muslims in China,”said Dorjee, who adopted Gulmira Imin in 2018 as part of USCIRF’s Religious Prisoners of Conscience Project. “The Chinese government used Ms. Imin as a scapegoat for unrest in Xinjiang rather than reflecting upon the role its repressive policies might have had in fueling discontent. We urge China to release Ms. Imin and the other Uighur Muslims that it has detained because of their religious or cultural identity.”

https://www.uscirf.gov/news-room/press-releases-statements/press-release-uscirf-commissioner-tenzin-dorjee-calls-release

 

Open Rank Faculty Position in Constitutional Studies at Notre Dame

Open Rank Faculty Position in Constitutional Studies

Department of Political Science

University of Notre Dame

 

The Department of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame invites applications for an open-rank full-time, tenure track/tenured faculty position in Constitutional Studies. The department seeks applications from promising and distinguished scholars with a research focus in American constitutionalism, which includes but is not limited to public law, the history and philosophy of American democracy, and American constitutional development.

 

The successful candidate will be a member of and offer graduate-level courses in the Department’s Ph.D. subfield in Constitutional Studies and core classes in the University’s undergraduate minor in Constitutional Studies, such as: “American Constitutionalism,” “Constitutional Government & Public Policy,” and “The History and Philosophy of Constitutional Government.”

 

The successful candidate will also contribute to Notre Dame’s thriving Program in Constitutional Studies, a center of research and teaching devoted to the production of distinguished scholarship and the cultivation of knowledgeable and civically-minded citizens. The Program directs the University’s growing 100+ student minor in Constitutional Studies and sponsors many lectures, seminars, and colloquia each academic year.

 

Application Instructions

All applicants are required to submit a letter of interest, a C.V., three letters of reference, and a teaching statement which includes a summary of any teaching evaluations available.

Apply by October 1, 2019 at https://apply.interfolio.com/66463

 

 

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement

This appointment is contingent upon the successful completion of a background check.  Applicants will be asked to identify all felony convictions and/or pending felony charges.  Felony convictions do not automatically bar an individual from employment.  Each case will be examined separately to determine the appropriateness of employment in the particular position.  Failure to be forthcoming or dishonesty with respect to felony disclosures can result in the disqualification of a candidate.  The full procedure can be viewed at https://facultyhandbook.nd.edu/?id=link-73597.

Equal Opportunity Employment Statement

The University of Notre Dame seeks to attract, develop, and retain the highest quality faculty, staff and administration.  The University is an Equal Opportunity Employer, and is committed to building a culturally diverse workplace.  We strongly encourage applications from female and minority candidates and those candidates attracted to a university with a Catholic identity.  Moreover, Notre Dame prohibits discrimination against veterans or disabled qualified individuals, and requires affirmative action by covered contractors to employ and advance veterans and qualified individuals with disabilities in compliance with 41 CFR 60-741.5(a) and 41 CFR 60-300.5(a).

National Moot Court Competition in Law and Religion at Touro

Thanks to Sam Levine for the tip - more information on the 6th Annual competition at Touro is here.

The Inspired Mary Ann Glendon and Her Dismal Critics

The best path to understanding why Mary Ann Glendon is such an inspired choice to lead Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s Commission on Unalienable Rights may run through the apoplexy of her critics.

Full article at Law & Liberty here.

Cert Petition Urging Overruling of Smith

The Becket Fund has filed a certiorari petition in a case called Ricks v. Idaho Board of Contractors. Ricks, who applied for an Idaho license to be able to practice his livelihood as a construction contractor, objected to the requirement of providing his social security number (he believes, as a small but non-negligible number of people have regularly believed, that it’s the “mark of the beast” in Revelation 13:16-18). The petition urges the Court to overrule Employment Division v. Smith and subject even “neutral and generally applicable laws” to meaningful scrutiny under the Free Exercise Clause.

Ten religious liberty scholars, including yours truly, have signed an amicus brief supporting the petition. Tom Hungar and others at Gibson Dunn drafted and filed the brief on our behalf. From the summary of argument:

Smith is ripe for reconsideration, and this case presents an excellent opportunity for the Court to engage in that endeavor. Smith itself was a departure from this Court’s previously settled requirement that the government demonstrate a compelling interest before imposing a substantial burden on the free exercise of religion. The question of the proper interpretation of the Free Exercise Clause was not briefed in Smith, but it has been substantially elucidated by subsequent academic work. That scholarship reveals that the Framers understood the Clause not merely as embodying an equal protection principle that prohibits targeting or discriminating against religion, but also as a substantive protection granted to religious practices even in some circumstances where similar secular conduct can be prohibited. The Smith Court’s undue contraction of the protections afforded by the Free Exercise Clause inevitably falls hardest on adherents of minority religions—the very individuals that the Clause was adopted to protect.

Religious Leaders in Cuba are Bravely Confronting the Regime’s Oppression

This recent opinion in the Miami Herald gives a great summary of recent events in Cuba related to religious liberty. Cuba's Office of Religious Affairs continuously denies Cuban citizens the right to worship freely. 

Despite claims that it respects freedom of religion and belief, the Cuban government views religious advocates as problematic “counter-revolutionaries.” Through its Office of Religious Affairs — the main perpetrator of religious repression in Cuba — the government treats religious activists like common criminals. It divides the faith community by including a few in its tightly controlled Cuba Council of Churches, while treating others as troublemakers.

 

Last year, Catholic and Protestant religious leaders and followers called for stronger protections for freedom of religion and freedom of conscience to be included in the new constitution before it went to public referendum. Church leaders bravely united to expose the Cuban government’s efforts to water down previous constitutional guarantees of freedom by initiating two petitions, one signed by 180,000 Cuban citizens.

 

The Cuban government is retaliating. Last week, the Office of Religious Affairs canceled the National Catholic Youth Day, even though all permits were granted. Catholic priest Jorge Luis Perez said the arbitrary cancellation affected more than 3,000 young people’s spiritual retreat.

Garnett on "Why the Lawsuits Against Catholic Schools Should Fail"

I have an op-ed in the Indianapolis Star about the recent round of lawsuits that have been filed by former teachers against Catholic high schools and dioceses.   Here's a bit:

Every summer, the Supreme Court closes its work-year with a flurry of high-profile opinions dealing with controversial questions. The commentary and headlines about these decisions tends to focus on disagreement, division, and dissent. We should remember, though, that there are important, bedrock principles that unite the Court. 

One such principle, the justices unanimously reminded us just a few years ago, is that our country’s constitutional commitment to religious freedom does not allow the government to interfere with a church’s decision about its teachings or its teachers. The Court’s liberals and conservatives agree: If church-state separation means anything, it means this. . . .

If we value real diversity and meaningful pluralism in that sector, it is essential to respect both the freedom of religious schools to be distinctive and the decisions of religious schools about how to carry out, and who should carry out, their mission. 

Reasonable people in good faith can and will disagree about particular employment decisions, and it is appropriate to criticize what one regards as unfair, unjust, or uncharitable discrimination. In the United States, though, just as no one is forced to embrace a particular faith, no one is entitled to teach, lead, and minister in a particular religious school. The Constitution protects the right to reject a church’s teachings but does not permit the government to reshape them

"Human Dignity, Law, and Religious Diversity": International Conference

Here is a call for proposals for both panels and papers for the 6th conference of the International Consortium for Law and Religion Studies (ICLARS), to be held in Cordoba, Spain, September 2020. The theme is "Human Dignity, Law, and Religious Diversity: Designing the Future of Inter-Cultural Societies.” Which makes room for a wide variety of topics, all in the orbit of this blog, its writers, and its readers.

And southern Spain in September? Yes indeed. (The organizers promise to show participants something of beautiful Cordoba.)

As the call explains, institutions and research groups, as well as individuals, can make proposals for panels. "[T]he proposing institution or research group —subject to the organizing committee’s approval— will design the subject of the panel and appoint the speakers. The proposing institution or research group will be mentioned as one of the conference sponsors provided it takes care of the registration fees and attendance of the speakers."

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WHILE WE'RE ON THE SUBJECT: The Punta del Este Declaration (December 2018) reaffirms the centrality of human dignity to human rights, on the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. A couple of bits from the new declaration:

3. Defining and Specifying Human Rights.
Dignity is an essential part of what it means to be human. Respect for human dignity for everyone everywhere
helps us define and understand the meaning and scope of all human rights. Focusing concretely and in actual
situations on human dignity and its implications for particular human rights claims can help identify the specific
content of these rights as well as how we understand human dignity itself....
6. Seeking Common Ground.
Focusing on human dignity for everyone everywhere encourages people to search for ways to find common ground
regarding competing claims and to move beyond exclusively legal mechanisms for harmonizing, implementing,
and mutually vindicating human rights and finding solutions to conflicts.

Sharonell Fulton v. City of Philadelphia

Will Philadelphia’s Catholic Social Services soon have to close its foster care program – a program or ministry that has operated for a century in a city that desperately needs more foster homes to take in its most vulnerable kids?

Philadelphia’s Catholic Social Services and two of its certified foster parents have asked the high court to review the city’s impossible demand that the agency endorse or certify same-sex married couples as foster parents. Catholic Social Services wanted to continue the work it is so good at – finding loving foster homes for vulnerable children – while adhering to long-standing Church teaching on the nature of marriage.

Full article: https://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/the-supreme-court-review-of-sharonell-fulton-et-al-v-city-of-philadelphia/

My appearance in an essay in Sojourners

I make an appearance in this article from the left-wing religious magazine Sojourners. To provide greater context for the things I'm quoted as saying in the piece, here is what I said to the author in response to his request for my comments:

Dear Mr. Strong:

Thank you for your message.

I am a Catholic. I believe what the Catholic Church holds and teaches. So I believe the following, from the Declaration “Nostra Aetate” of the Second Vatican Council:

“The Church has also esteem for the Muslims. They worship God, who is one, living and subsistent, merciful and almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has also spoken to men. They strive to submit themselves without reserve to the decrees of God, just as Abraham submitted himself to God's plan, to whose faith Muslims link their own. Although not acknowledging Jesus as God, they revere him as a prophet; his virgin Mother they also honor, and even at times devoutly invoke. Further, they await the Day of Judgment and the reward of God following the resurrection of the dead. For this reason they highly esteem an upright life and worship God, especially by way of prayer, almsgiving, and fasting. Over the centuries many quarrels and dissensions have arisen between Christians and Muslims. The sacred Council now pleads with all to forget the past, and urges that a sincere effort be made to achieve mutual understanding; for the benefit of all men, let them together preserve and promote peace, liberty, social justice and moral values.”

It has been my privilege and joy to work with dear Muslim friends, such as Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, Suzy Ismail, and Ismail Royer to promote justice and moral values in standing up for the sanctity of human life in all stages and conditions, beginning with the life of the precious and vulnerable child in the womb; in defending religious freedom for people of all faiths and shades of belief; in arguing for a generous and compassionate policy of accepting refugees from persecution and terror; in fighting against the evils of pornography and human trafficking; and in standing up for marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife. Devout Christians would do well to remember that we do share much with our faithful Muslim brothers and sisters—the majority of whom, certainly here in the United States, want for their children what we want for ours: a peaceful society, a decent culture, a fair and flourishing economy, an excellent system of education, the freedom to worship and to bring our religiously-inspired convictions concerning justice and the common good into the public square and make our case, in freedom and peace, to our fellow citizens.

I do not know anything about these YouTube people you mention, nor did I bother to watch the video—which, from your description, sounds disgusting. There are all kinds of people out there claiming that they are true Catholics while utterly rejecting central, foundational Catholic moral teachings. Consider, for example, people like Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, who support the killing of unborn children and would even force their fellow citizens to fund the slaughter with tax dollars. Just as the Catholic Church solemnly demands respect for the life of the child in the womb, the Church solemnly demands respect for the religious freedom of all—certainly including Muslims. The idea of forced conversion is antithetical to Catholicism. As the Church teaches in the declaration “Dignitatis Humane” of the Second Vatican Council, faith must be free and uncoerced. A compelled faith is no faith at all. Compulsion can produce only the outward forms of religious observance. It cannot produce the interior acts of intellect and will that are the substance of faith. Coercion in matters of faith is deeply opposed to the dignity of the human person.

Yours sincerely,

Robert George

https://twitter.com/Sojourners/status/1156551333991727104

Legal Spirits Podcast: Is Satanism a Religion?

In this podcast, the scholars at Saint John’s discuss several recent law and religion controversies concerning the “Satanic Temple.”

Celebrating Seneca Falls on the National Constitution Center's Podcast

Jeffery Rosen invited Tracy Thomas of Akron Law and me on the National Constitution's Center's podcast, We the People, to discuss the Constitutional Legacy of Seneca Falls. It's a wide-ranging discussion of the Declaration of Sentiments of 1848 -- and whether that remarkable document's legacy can be claimed by those who favor Roe v Wade.  I think not. 

U.S. State Department announces new religious freedom initiative at second annual Ministerial

Last week, the U.S. State Department held its second annual Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom. Secretary Pompeo, in his keynote address, made news by announcing the creation of an International Religious Freedom Alliance:

We hope that this new vehicle – the first ever international body devoted to this specific topic – will build on efforts to date and bring likeminded countries together to confront challenges of international religious freedom.

It will provide a space for the work that we do here to flourish throughout the year. And importantly, it will defend the unalienable rights for all human beings to believe – or not to believe – whatever it is they choose. We’re eager to discuss this new initiative with you and to work with you and to build it out.

 

 

 

Immigration and American Exceptionalism

Immigration and American Exceptionalism

Robert P. George

 

    That the United States of America is an exceptional nation seems to me to be a proposition whose truth is too obvious to debate.  What other nation in the history of the world was, quite literally, “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”?  There is no other nation.  And our nation was not only, “so conceived, and so dedicated,” it has proven to the world that “a nation so conceived and so dedicated can [indeed] long endure.”  The history of our nation is the story of “We the people”—the American people—struggling (sometimes struggling against each other) to protect, and honor, and live up to the exceptional principles around which we have integrated ourselves and constituted ourselves as a people.  And while our record is far from unblemished, we have not been left unblessed with success.         

    No one needs me to remind him that part of what is unique about the United States is that our common bonds are not in blood or even soil, but are in a shared moral-political creed.  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  This is clearest in the fact that people really can, in the richest and fullest possible sense, become Americans.  And millions upon millions of people have done so.  Of course, one can become a citizen of Greece or France or China, but can one really become a Greek, or a Frenchman, or Chinese?  An immigrant who becomes a citizen of the United States becomes, or at least can become, not merely an American citizen, but an American.  He is as American as the fellow whose ancestors arrived on the Mayflower.    

    Now, how do immigrants become Americans?  In practice, it goes beyond becoming an American citizen, and even formally signing on with the American creed.  The additional key ingredient, I believe, is gratitude.  It is, typically, an immigrant’s feelings of gratitude to America for the liberty, security, and opportunity our nation affords him and his family that leads to his appreciation of the ideals and institutions of American cultural, economic, and civic life.  From this appreciation comes his belief in the goodness of American ideals, as articulated above all in the Declaration of Independence, and the value of the constitutional structures and institutions by which they are effectuated.  And from this belief arises his aspiration to become an American citizen together with his willingness to shoulder the responsibilities of citizenship and even to make great sacrifices for the nation, should it come to that.

    My own immigrant grandfathers came to the United States about a hundred and twenty years ago.  Like most immigrants then and now, they were not drawn by any abstract belief in the superiority of the American political system.  My father’s father came from Syria fleeing oppression visited upon him and his family as members of a relatively small ethnic and religious minority group in that troubled country.  My mother’s father came to escape the poverty of southern Italy.  They both worked on the railroads and in the mines.  My maternal grandfather settled in West Virginia, where there was a small Italian immigrant community in Clarksburg, Fairmont, and Morgantown—a trio of cities along the Monongahela River a little south of the Pennsylvania border.  He was able to save enough money to start a little grocery store, which soon became a flourishing business.  My paternal grandfather spent his entire life as a miner and laborer.  He died of emphysema, no doubt as a result of the pulmonary health hazards of coal mining in those days.  Both men were exceedingly grateful for what America made possible for them and their families.  Their gratitude was not diminished when times got hard—as they did for all Americans—in the Great Depression.

    Although both my grandfathers encountered ethnic prejudice, they viewed this as an aberration—a failure of some Americans to live up to the nation’s ideals.  It did not dawn on them to blame the bad behavior of some Americans on America itself.  On the contrary, America in their eyes was a land of unsurpassed blessing.  It was a nation of which they were proud and happy to become citizens.  And even before they became citizens they had become patriots—men who deeply appreciated what America is and what she stands for.

    Like so many other immigrants, my immigrant grandparents particularly appreciated the opportunities that America made available to their children.  My father’s father had a sister—she too an immigrant—who had a son named John Solomon who wanted to be a lawyer.  He finished college and then completed law school at West Virginia University.  The law school in those days was located on University Avenue in Morgantown near the center of the campus.  It was a grand building that one entered by walking up a broad set of stairs.  When my cousin John’s mother—we knew her as Halte Gemile—came to attend her son’s graduation ceremony, she stopped to kiss each step as she ascended those stairs.  Such was her gratitude.  Of course, her son was thoroughly embarrassed by this display.  My father, who was there, tells me that his cousin John turned to his mother at about the fourth step and pleaded: “Please mom, you’re acting like an immigrant.”  Indeed, she was.

    I talked a moment ago about how gratitude for liberty, security, and opportunity leads immigrants to an appreciation of American ideals and institutions, and in turn gives rise to an aspiration to American citizenship and a willingness to bear its responsibilities and even to make great sacrifices.  Four of my paternal grandparents’ five sons were drafted into the U.S. military to serve in the Second World War.  My maternal grandparents’ only son was also drafted.  All of these men served in combat and returned with decorations.  Their immigrant parents were immensely proud of them—proud of them precisely because they fought for America and for what America stands for.  They considered that their sons were fighting for their country—not for a country in which they were resident aliens or guests.  They were fighting for a country that was not only great, but good.  A country whose ideals were noble.  A country to whom they were immensely grateful—and not merely because it provided a haven from poverty and oppression.  A country whose principles they had come to believe in.

    When their boys were fighting, they knew that it was entirely possible—all-too-possible—that ultimately they would be called upon to give what Lincoln at Gettysburg described as the “last full measure of devotion.”  You can imagine the anxiety this would cause in an Italian family whose one and only son had been sent into the brutal combat of the Pacific theatre.  But however much sleep was lost as a result of fear and even dread, they remained proud that their son was fighting for his country, for their country, for America.  Nor did the fact that Italy under fascist rule was on the other side of the conflict give them so much as a moment’s pause.  The gratitude, leading to appreciation, leading to the conviction and commitment at the heart of true American patriotism left them in no doubt as to where their loyalty belonged.

    I have the sense that my uncles’ service to the nation at a time of peril was not only an expression of their Americanism, and the Americanism of their immigrant parents, it was a profound confirmation and ratification of it.  If they had any doubts in their own minds about whether they were truly and fully Americans—as American as their fellow citizens whose ancestors really had arrived here on the Mayflower—military service erased those doubts.  I dare say that the same was true, as has always been true, just in case any native-born citizens had any doubts about whether their immigrant neighbors were, in truth, good, loyal Americans.  The willingness of immigrants and their children to take the risks and, in many, many, many cases to be counted among the fallen, leaves the question of allegiance and American identity in no doubt.

    Of course, some Protestant Americans wondered whether non-Protestants—and especially Catholics—could truly become Americans.  They were concerned that hierarchical and non-democratic forms of church governance would hinder the ability of non-Protestant immigrants to appreciate and fully give their allegiance to democratic institutions and principles of civic life.  Some even believed that Catholic immigrants would have to be de-Catholicized by the public school system and other mechanisms in order to become patriotic Americans.  The natural and understandable Catholic reaction to this—the establishment of Catholic parochial schools across the country—only heightened Protestant worries.  But part of what eventually made these worries go away was the record of service and heroism of Catholic and other non-Protestant soldiers (including countless products of parochial schools) fighting for democracy and against authoritarian regimes and totalitarian ideologies in the First and especially the Second World War.  Catholics saw no contradiction between their faith and their allegiance to the United States of America.  On the contrary, religious commitment tended to support patriotic conviction.  Faithful Catholics wanted to be, and not merely to be seen to be—though that, too—the very best of good American citizens.  And as they saw and see it, that doesn’t require the slightest dilution of their Catholic faith.

    Now, I have been talking about how gratitude launches immigrants on the path to becoming Americans.  It has happened to millions. There are countless permutations of the story, but they are permutations of the same story.  I suspect that as you hear me tell the stories of my grandparents, many of you are thinking of stories, not at all dissimilar, of your grandparents, or great grandparents, or great great grandparents, and how they became Americans.  The amazing and wonderful thing is that a family story like mine of immigrant ancestors becoming Americans, sharing in the blessings of American life, and taking upon themselves their share of the nation’s burdens, is not the exception; it is the norm.  (Of course, the story of Africans brought to America as slaves and then subjected to segregation and discrimination even after slavery was abolished is a radically different one—a story of injustice and a stain upon our nation’s history.  Yet the great efforts to right these wrongs and live up to our national ideals of liberty and justice for all are also part of our American heritage.)

    But now let me turn to the other side of the coin.  As we know all-too-well, today not all immigrants become Americans or even want to become Americans. Identity politics of the sort that is fiercely promoted by opinion-shaping elites in many sectors of our society—has been embraced by some immigrants and may be embraced by more.  This is not simply a matter of hanging onto customs, traditions, and ethnic or religious identities and passing them on to the next generation.  Immigrants have always done this, and it is fine and good—a source of strength for our nation. Rather, it is a matter of rejecting the idea of a primary and central political allegiance to the United States and its ideals and institutions.  Often this rejection is rooted in a denial of the goodness of America and even an assertion of America’s wickedness.  Sometimes it manifests itself in a view of American history as a history of nothing but racism, exploitation, chauvinism, abuse, imperialism, and other injustices.  For people who view things this way, the United States is hardly an object of gratitude.  On the contrary, it is the sinner, the debtor, who must abase itself before the world, make amends, and give recompense.  It is not owed gratitude or allegiance, it owes.  Putative victims of its oppression and their descendants are entitled to feast from its bounty with no gratitude or loyalty required in return.

    If, as I have argued, it is gratitude that launches immigrants on the path to becoming Americans, it is attitude that impedes and prevents immigrants from embarking on the journey.  Grateful immigrants become Americans; immigrants with attitude do not.  What do I mean by attitude?  I mean what the kids mean:  a bad attitude—an attitude of hostility to America and to her principles; an attitude of superiority; an attitude of entitlement; an attitude of unrelenting grievance.  An attitude promoted, as I say, by influential people in education, journalism, and even government.  An attitude abetted by misguided policies, such as forms of bilingualism that have the effect—though I am not claiming they all do (“bilingualism” means different things)—of discouraging mainly Latino young people from fully mastering the English language; policies that turn the ideal of pluralism into an attack on national unity and common bonds.  Policies that foster a culture of entitlement—one where all the emphasis on is on rights, and none is on responsibilities; one in which assistance provided by states or the federal government to those in need is perceived not as a manifestation of the generosity of the American people, but as payment (inevitably said to be meager and inadequate) on a debt created by the allegedly predatory and exploitative acts of previous generations of Americans.

    Now, where a culture of opportunity flourishes, immigrants will feel, as my grandparents felt, gratitude for the opportunities they are afforded to lift themselves up, and make a better life for their children, by dint of hard work and determination to succeed.  However, it appears to be a brute fact of human psychology that where a culture of entitlement prevails, gratitude even for charitable assistance will not emerge.  In part, of course, this is to be explained by the fact that upward social mobility is dampened in circumstances of a culture of entitlement.  This is the phenomenon known as welfare dependency.  I observed its soul-destroying effects on many non-immigrant families in West Virginia as I was growing up.  You see, dependency is an equal opportunity soul destroyer.  And this, in turn, leads to resentment as people persuade themselves that the reason they are not getting ahead is that those who are already better off are cheating or manipulating the system to hold down people at the bottom of the ladder (who are dependent on entitlements).  So the culture of entitlement ends up reinforcing the attitude that impedes the gratitude that enables immigrants to become Americans.

    I want immigrants to become Americans.  I want them to believe in American ideals and institutions.  I want them to “hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  I want them to believe, as I believe, in the dignity of the human being, in all stages and conditions of life; in limited government, republican democracy, equality of opportunity, morally ordered liberty, private property, economic freedom, and the rule of law.  I want them to believe in these ideals and principles not merely because they are ours, but because they are noble and good and true.  They honor the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of all members of the human family.  They call forth from us the best that we are capable of.  They ennoble us.  Our efforts to live up to them, despite our failures and imperfections, have made us a great people, a force for freedom and justice in the world, and, of course, an astonishingly prosperous nation.  It is little wonder that America is, as it always has been, a magnet for people from every land who seek a better life.  It is no wonder that in America barriers are proposed to keep people from entering our nation illegally; not for preventing people who are here from fleeing.

    But the transmission of American ideals to immigrants and, indeed, to anyone, including new generations of native-born Americans, depends on the maintenance of a culture in which these ideals flourish.  The maintenance of such a culture is a complicated business—one with many dimensions.  I have already talked about how social welfare and other policies, if unsound, can undermine these ideals.  I have also mentioned the emergence of ideologies, flourishing today in elite sectors of American culture, which weaken them.  These ideologies--above all the toxic ideology of identitarianism (which one finds among extremists of all types, including white nationalists)--must be taken seriously and confronted.  This is the great intellectual and pedagogical mission before us.  The task is thrust upon us by what can only be described as a massive loss of faith in the goodness of America and her traditional beliefs among opinion-leaders in key positions of influence.  This loss of faith discourages patriotism and national unity--often provoking a reaction that amounts to little more than a disgraceful parody of these noble ideals.

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"Religious Freedom and the Churches: Contemporary Challenges in the United States Today"

Here is a new-ish (and short!) paper of mine, forthcoming in Studies in Christian Ethics.   Here's the abstract:

A crucial, but often overlooked, dimension of the human and constitutional right to religious freedom is the autonomy of religious institutions, associations, and societies with respect to matters of governance, doctrine, formation, and membership. Although the Supreme Court of the United States has affirmed this autonomy in the context of American constitutional law, it is vulnerable, and even under threat, for a variety of reasons, including a general decline in the health of civil society and mediating associations and a crisis of confidence and authority caused by clerical sexual abuse and churches' failure to respond to it.

A Principle of Immigration Priority

I want to suggest a principle of immigration priority that should, I hope, be broadly acceptable or at least intriguing for all right-thinking persons concerned that current American immigration policy is racist and classist, explicitly or implicitly, de jure or de facto. The principle is to give lexical priority to confirmed Catholics, all of whom will jump immediately to the head of the queue. Yes, some will convert in order to gain admission; this is a feature, not a bug.

This principle will disproportionately favor immigrants from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. (Note here that the priority is for actual Catholics, not for applicants from “historically Catholic countries”; relatively few Western Europeans will pass through the eye of the needle, and the Irish will be almost totally excluded). It will disproportionately favor the poor, and will draw no distinction between those seeking asylum based on a fear of persecution, and those fleeing “mere” economic hardship. It will in effect require opening the southern border of the United States, although immigration from Canada will rightly become a rare and difficult event, at least if we do not count a small subset of Quebecois.

I venture to say that any opposition to this proposal almost necessarily defends some alternative principle of immigration priority that allocates fewer spots to non-whites and to the poor, and is thus a troubling indicator of racism and classism infesting whoever voices that opposition. We must overcome the know-nothing bigotry of the past. As the superb blog Semiduplex observes, Catholics need to rethink the nation-state. We have come a long way, but we still have far to go — towards the eventual formation of the Empire of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and ultimately the world government required by natural law.

Religious freedom summit opens with stories of religious violence and resilience

The State Department’s second Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom began on Tuesday with stories about religious violence and resilience.

All of the ministerial speeches and sessions can be viewed here.

Human Rights Depend on Natural Law

As this recent article by Dan Philpott in Public Discourse reminds us, human rights depend on natural law. Regarding the right to life, Philpott notes:

 

The right to life, though, is the most basic of natural, human rights. That preborn children are persons is disputed but not disputable. Science textbooks attest that the embryo, once formed, is a unified, distinct being that has begun to develop on its own impetus. In a recent article in The Atlantic, Emma Green describes abortion rights activists as being “on high alert for what they describe as efforts to ‘humanize fetuses,’” revealing that abortion rights rely on a denial of the humanity of the preborn person. This humanity is not absent from the human rights heritage, in which the 1959 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child holds that every child “needs special safeguards and care, including legal protection, before as well as after birth.”

Thoughts on Hobbes, Kuyper, constitutionalism, and conservatism on "Bastille Day"

Here is a book chapter I did a few years ago, for a NOMOS volume on "American Conservatism", called "The Worms and the Octopus."  I admit, I like the title.  here is the abstract:

A formidable challenge for an academic lawyer hoping to productively engage and intelligently assess “American Conservative Thought and Politics” is answering the question, “what, exactly, are we talking about?” The question is difficult, the subject is elusive. “American conservatism” has always been protean, liquid, and variegated – more a loosely connected or casually congregating group of conservatisms than a cohesive and coherent worldview or program. There has always been a variety of conservatives and conservatisms – a great many shifting combinations of nationalism and localism, piety and rationalism, energetic entrepreneurism and romanticization of the rural, skepticism and crusading idealism, elitism and populism – in American culture, politics, and law.

That said, no one would doubt the impeccably conservative bona fides of grumbling about the French Revolution and about 1789, “the birth year of modern life.” What Russell Kirk called “[c]onscious conservatism, in the modern sense” first arrived on the scene with Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, and at least its Anglo-American varieties have long been pervasively shaped by his reaction. As John Courtney Murray put it, Burke’s targets included those “French enthusiasts” who tolerated “no autonomous social forms intermediate between the individual and the state” and who aimed to “destroy[]…all self-governing intermediate social forms with particular ends.” I suggest, then, that to be “conservative” is at least and among other things to join Burke in rejecting Rousseau’s assertions that “a democratic society should be one in which absolutely nothing stands between man and the state” and that non-state authorities and associations should be proscribed. In other words, to be “conservative” is to take up the cause of Hobbes’s “worms in the entrails” and to resist the reach of Kuyper’s “octopus.” At or near the heart of anything called “conservatism” should be an appreciation and respect for the place and role of non-state authorities in promoting both the common good and the flourishing of persons and a commitment to religious freedom for individuals and institutions alike, secured in part through constitutional limits on the powers of political authorities. Accordingly, one appropriate way for an academic lawyer to engage “American Conservative Thought and Politics” is to investigate and discuss the extent to which these apparently necessary features or elements of conservatism are present in American public law. Pluralism and religion, in other words, are topics that should provide extensive access to this volume’s subject.

Remember the Vendee.

Plato's "Good Man" Theory of Judging

From Book III of the Republic (PUP Edition, pp. 653-54, Paul Shorey trans.), to be set against Holmes's "bad man" theory :

"But a judge, mark you, my friend, rules soul with soul and it is not allowable for a soul to have been bred from youth up among evil souls and to have grown familiar with them, and itself to have run the gauntlet of every kind of wrongdoing and injustice so as quickly to infer from itself the misdeeds of others as it might diseases in the body, but it must have been inexperienced in evil natures and uncontaminated by them while young, if it is to be truly fair and good and judge soundly of justice. For which cause the better sort seem to be simple-minded in youth and are easily deceived by the wicked, since they do not have within themselves patterns answering to the affections of the bad...

Therefore it is, said I, that the good judge must not be a youth but an old man [Ed.: cf. Federalist 78: "Hence it is, that there can be but few men in the society who will have sufficient skill in the laws to qualify them for the stations of judges. And making the proper deductions for the ordinary depravity of human nature, the number must be still smaller of those who unite the requisite integrity with the requisite knowledge."], a late learner of the nature of injustice, one who has not become aware of it as a property of his own soul, but one who has through the long years trained himself to understand it as an alien thing in alien souls, and to discern how great an evil it is by the instrument of mere knowledge and not by experience of his own. [Ed.: cf. "The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience"]...

For he who has a good soul is good. But that cunning fellow quick to suspect evil, and who has himself done many unjust acts and who thinks himself a smart trickster, when he associates with his like does appear to be clever, being on his guard and fixing his eyes on the patterns within himself. But when the time comes for him to mingle with the good and his elders, then on the contrary he appears stupid. He is unseasonably distrustful and he cannot recognize a sound character because he has not such pattern in himself. But since he more often meets with the bad than the good, he seems to himself and to others to be rather wise than foolish...

[S]uch a one must not be our ideal of the good and wise judge...For while badness could never come to know both virtue and itself, native virtue through education will at last acquire the science of both itself and badness. This one, then, as I think, is the man who proves to be wise and not the bad man."

A bad moral argument about the humanity of the unborn in support of a good law restricting abortion

One of the most well-argued books I've recently read on the topic of abortion is Francis J. Beckwith, Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice (Cambridge University Press 2007). Because of a project I'm working on this summer, my attention was drawn in particular to Beckwith's argument against resting the humanity of the unborn on human appearance after a certain point of development. (A version of Beckwith's arguments, which draw on John Jefferson Davis, Abortion and the Christian: What Every Believer Should Know, is available here.) 

Beckwith is right to observe that the human body takes on a variety of forms over the course of life. An elderly person does not have the body of a teenager, a teenager does not have the body of an infant, nor does an infant have the body of an embryo. A healthy, developing embryo at a particular time looks just like a healthy, developing embryo is supposed to look at that time. In Beckwith's words, "the unborn at any stage of her development looks perfectly human because that is what humans look like at that time." We risk confusing appearance with reality if we rest human moral worth on a certain type of human appearance. 

But let us not be too hasty in pushing aside the moral significance of a baby's obviously human appearance. In designing laws, it can be helpful to meet people where they're at. Consider the possible legal significance of the first three search results that popped up just now when I googled "pregnancy at twelve weeks":

A baby at twelve weeks gestational age has an obviously human body. If a baby has an obviously human body, isn't it reasonable for us as a people and for our government as a government to treat that baby as a human baby? And don't human babies deserve the equal protection of the laws?

I haven't mentioned anything yet about human personhood. For the moment, though, let's stick with the basic point that a baby with an obviously human body is obviously a human baby. Let's add in a couple other characteristics to the obviously human body, such as life and healthy normal development. Should the law truly be powerless to protect this human being? 

It's around this point that people interject considerations that tease apart the categories of human baby and human person. In unselfconscious reversal of the normal charge that pro-lifers are trying to impose their religious views about human personhood, those who seek to deny the human moral worth of babies with an obviously human body tend to rely on a controversial metaphysical claim. There is some property or quality, these people argue, that a human being with an obviously human body must _also_ possess in order to be a human person. But why should we let a controversial metaphysical position of this sort displace the idea that human bodiliness--whatever its relation to "full humanity" might be--is enough to bring a human being within the protective reach of positive law?

Cert Petition and Support in DC Bus-Advertisements Case

The Washington Metro Area Transit Authority (WMATA) accepts advertisements on the side of its buses but rejects religious ads along with political and "issue-advocacy" ads. Under that policy, WMATA  rejected an ad from the Catholic Archdiocese for its "Find the Perfect Gift" holiday campaign (directing viewers to information about worship services, charitable giving, and charitable-service opportunities), even though WMATA had accepted ads from retailers encouraging holiday shopping, from the Salvation Army exhorting charitable giving in the holiday red kettles, and from others (a yoga studio, a Christian radio station whose ad was supposedly not as overtly religious as the Archdiocese's, etc.).

The D.C. Circuit upheld the exclusion of the Archdiocese ad on the ground that it did not discriminate (impermissibly) against a religious viewpoint, but rather discriminated (permissibly) against religion as a "subject matter" in a nonpublic forum. The en banc court refused rehearing, over a strong dissent by Judge Griffith teeing up the case for cert (here is the SCOTUS Blog page). The cert petition, filed by Paul Clement et al. at Kirkland & Ellis, argues that the decision below is irreconcilable with Lamb's Chapel, Rosenberger, and Good New Club: the "equal access" decisions that hold, time after time, that exclusion of religious speech is viewpoint discrimination. (It also argues that excluding religious viewpoints as such violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.)

Our religious liberty clinic at St. Thomas filed a brief for multiple organizational amici supporting the petition. First, we zeroed in on a couple of the court of appeals' arguments for treating the religious exclusion as subject-based rather than viewpoint-based, including this argument:

the court of appeals reasoned that the Archdiocese would have been able to place an ad urging charitable donations if its ad, like that of the Salvation Army, “contained only non-religious imagery”—for example, an ad simply saying “Please Give to Catholic Charities.” App-25. This argument is irreconcilable with Lamb’s Chapel, Rosenberger, and Good News Club. In each of those cases the presentation of a religious perspective involved explicit religious language, not mere reference to a religious identity or the religious nature of a belief. A restriction on “religious imagery” cripples the ability of speakers to present religiously grounded, and only religiously grounded, perspectives.

Second, we argued that "the specific subject matter involved in this case—the meaning and essence of Christmas and the winter holidays—itself presents important and recurring questions":

There is an ongoing debate in society about the essence of the holiday, the priorities to observe in celebrating it, and the motivation for gift-giving. On these subjects, various religious and secular perspectives compete, and the government must not discriminate among expressions of these perspectives by private groups and individuals.

By allowing holiday-related ads exhorting commercial gift-giving and charitable giving, but not an ad exhorting the religious basis for the holiday and for gift-giving, the court upheld viewpoint discrimination within subject matters included in the forum. Our brief touched on some of the societal controversies over "keeping Christ in Christmas," etc. Those controversies, we argued,

show that there is a set of competing perspectives on the subjects of the holiday season and which elements of it are most important. Some of those controversies arise in contexts not applicable here, such as speech by employees of private businesses or displays sponsored by government. But this case involves a government restriction on private speakers expressing their religious perspective in a government forum. In that category of cases, the government’s proper course is clear: it must allow varying perspectives on a subject matter to be expressed, on equal terms. To accept ads emphasizing the commercial and charitable aspects of Christmas and gift-giving but refuse ads emphasizing religious perspectives on those subjects skews public debate—the fundamental harm to free expression from viewpoint discrimination.

Like the Montana tax-credit case (Espinoza) where cert was just granted, this case focuses on what Justice Kavanaugh recently called "the bedrock principle of religious equality"--a concept more simple than the sometimes complex questions over government-sponsored religious symbols and government accommodation of religious practice. Morris County Board of Chosen Freeholders v. Freedom from Religion Foundation, 139 S. Ct. 909, 909-11 (2019) (statement of Kavanaugh, J., respecting denial of certiorari). I would put the principle as "freely chosen religious activity should not be discouraged through discriminatory government actions"--but so framed, the principle is just as clear and foundational.

Both the Montana and D.C. cases show lower courts struggling mightily to validate discriminatory rules against voluntary religious speech and activity. A grant and reversal in the second case, joining the first, would clearly signal to judges and other officials that those efforts should cease.