Mirror of Justice

A blog dedicated to the development of Catholic legal theory.
Affiliated with the Program on Church, State & Society at Notre Dame Law School.

Monday, October 24, 2011

"Ze" and "hir" at college

I would hope that there is a middle ground between defining ourselves based on gender and dismissing gender as utterly irrelevant to identity.  Grinnell's policy stands in stark contrast with President Garvey's move at Catholic.  The more fundamental shift, though, is expressed by Grinnell's director of residence life:

“A couple decades ago, colleges were expected to behave as parents,” Conner said. “Today we are treating students like adults and letting them make their own decisions.”

As both a parent and as a former 18 year-old, I would vote for a little more willingness on the part of college administrators to play the parental card from time to time.

October 24, 2011 in Vischer, Rob | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Michael Paulsen on Gender Selection Abortions

My colleague, Mike Paulsen, has posted a piece on the Public Discourse site, titled "It's a Girl."  Check  out the full article here.  Herewith a couple of excerpts:

Millions of women obtain abortions because they do not want baby girls.

It’s shocking, but incontrovertible. * * * In a recently published book, Unnatural Selection, journalist Mara Hvistendahl convincingly demonstrates that the overwhelming reason for the increasingly large demographic disparity in the male-female birth ratio is sex-selection abortion. Hvistendahl estimates the number of missing or dead now to be 160 million and counting. Women have abortions because (among other reasons) they are able to learn the sex of their unborn baby and kill her if she’s a girl.

* * *

Being confronted with a harsh reality can change the minds of persons who have thought about a question only in abstract, arid terms. It is possible, then, that even a pro-abortion Court, confronted with a law banning sex-selection abortion, might recognize and retreat from the consequences of its own prior decisions. Enacting sex-selection bans, even if contrary to Roe and Casey, just might lead the Court to begin charting a path away from Roe.

* * *

Not just pro-choice justices, but also pro-choice politicians need to be confronted with, and called to account for, the lethal logic and terrible consequences of their support of Roe. President Obama, and pro-choice members of Congress and state legislatures, should be put to a straightforward test: Do you support or oppose a right to abortion for reasons of sex-selection? Should a woman have a constitutional right to abortion because “it’s a girl”? There is no better litmus test issue over life, and there is no better time for pressing such a challenge than during an election year.

October 24, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

Fragoso on conscience, health care, and takings

My student, Michael Fragoso, has just published a student note that will be of interest to many MOJ readers.  It's called "Taking Conscience Seriously or Seriously Taking Conscience?  Obstetricians, Specialty Boards, and the Takings Clause."  Check it out.

October 24, 2011 in Garnett, Rick | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Vatican favors a global financial authority

Today the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace called for the establishment of a global financial authority.  An excerpt:

[A] long road still needs to be travelled before arriving at the creation of a public Authority with universal jurisdiction. It would seem logical for the reform process to proceed with the United Nations as its reference because of the worldwide scope of its responsibilities, its ability to bring together the nations of the world, and the diversity of its tasks and those of its specialized Agencies. The fruit of such reforms ought to be a greater ability to adopt policies and choices that are binding because they are aimed at achieving the common good on the local, regional and world levels. Among the policies, those regarding global social justice seem most urgent: financial and monetary policies that will not damage the weakest countries; and policies aimed at achieving free and stable markets and a fair distribution of world wealth, which may also derive from unprecedented forms of global fiscal solidarity, which will be dealt with later.On the way to creating a world political Authority, questions of governance (that is, a system of merely horizontal coordination without an authority super partes cannot be separated from those of a shared government (that is, a system which in addition to horizontal coordination establishes an authority super partes) which is functional and proportionate to the gradual development of a global political society.

Is this sound and timely advice, or an example of the Vatican's moral reach exceeding its technical grasp?

October 24, 2011 in Vischer, Rob | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack (0)

Friday, October 21, 2011

The new Journal of Catholic Legal Studies

The new issue of the Journal of Catholic Legal Studies is available online, and it includes papers from two symposia that might be of interest to MoJ readers.

The first focuses on the question, Whom Should a Catholic Law School Honor?, and features contributions from Amy Uelmen, Rick Garnett, Michael Baur, Karen Stohr, and me.

The second is a collection of reviews of my recent book, Conscience and the Common Good.  Contributors include Patrick Brennan, Michael Moreland, Nora O'Callaghan, and Gerald Russello.

October 21, 2011 in Vischer, Rob | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Bishop Kevin Rhoades's Red Mass homily on religious freedom

My bishop, Kevin Rhoades, gave at the local Red Mass an excellent homily on the importance of, and some of the threats to, religious freedom.  A bit:

. . .  As Americans, we enjoy the guarantee of freedom of religion, enshrined as the first Amendment to our nation’s Constitution.  Religious freedom is something we Americans cherish.  It is something that we as Catholics hold to be a fundamental human right, a right rooted in the very dignity of the human person.  It is rooted in human nature, part of the natural law.  The right to religious freedom, like the right to life, is an essential element of human dignity.

In his address to the United Nations in 2008, Pope Benedict spoke about religious freedom and about the need for recognition of the religious and the social dimensions of the human person.  He said: “it is inconceivable that believers should have to suppress a part of themselves – their faith – in order to be active citizens.  It should never be necessary to deny God in order to enjoy one’s rights.”

I am speaking about these things at this Red Mass this evening because of the current situation the Catholic Church is facing here in the United States.  There is a subtle, and increasingly not so subtle, effort by some in our society to restrict our religious liberty.  And they are enjoying some success. . . . 

October 21, 2011 in Garnett, Rick | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

The Retributivist Tradition and Its Future -- November 4 at St. John's Law School

If you are in or about New York City on November 4, please consider attending The Retributivist41HaPyMl0ML__SL500_AA300_ Tradition And Its Future at St. John's University School of Law.  The conference will take up many of the chapters in Retributivism: Essays on Theory and Policy (Mark D. White, ed., 2011).  My own small contribution to the conference, which I'm still chewing over, might be titled something like, "The Retributivst Tradition As Its Future."

The conference description follows and the program is after the jump.  Hope you can make it. 

Retributivism as a justification of punishment is a very old idea, with sources in ancient codes of religious law and morality. After a period of dormancy in the 20th century, retributivism is now ascendant again as a theory of punishment, as scholars have reinterpreted the commitment to just desert in novel and provocative ways.

This conference, The Retributivist Tradition and Its Future, brings together leading thinkers in punishment theory to reflect on retributivism's past and present, with an eye toward what retributivism and punishment theory generally might become. Many of the speakers are also contributors to the recently published volume, Retributivism: Essays on Theory and Policy (Mark D. White, ed., OUP 2011), which will also be considered at the conference.

Continue reading

October 21, 2011 in DeGirolami, Marc | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Low, crude, and nasty . . . even for Maureen Dowd

I know, I know . . . why do I (why does anyone) read Maureen Dowd?  It's all snark, snarl, preen, repeat.  Still, her recent piece on Gov. Mitt Romney's Mormon religion is, even for her, stands out.  After not-remotely-subtly calling attention to Mormon practices and beliefs that she knows her readers will find strange or objectionable, she then acts as though she's just reporting and warning about those nasty other folks "who have made faith part of the presidential test," rather than stoking the fires of anti-Mormonism herself (obviously, with an eye toward the 2012 general election).  (To be clear, I don't think it's necessarily wrong for citizens to think and talk about candidates' religious beliefs and commitments, and -- if they are relevant, as they surely can be -- to take them into account when voting.  What is wrong, I think, is to stoke prejudice while purporting to criticize it.)

October 20, 2011 in Garnett, Rick | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Aidan O'Neill on the EU human-embryo decision

Following up on Fr. Araujo's post:  Over at EutopiaLaw, MOJ-friend Aidan O'Neill has posted this discussion of the Court of Justice's decision (quoting Fr. Arajuo) that "the process of removing stem cells from a human embryo, which necessitates death of the embryo, cannot be patented."  A taste:

Whatever one thinks of the merits of the decision, the reasoning of the CJEU is of particular interest from a legal and ethical point of view in its reference to and reliance upon “fundamental rights and, in particular, the dignity of the person” as regards the treatment of the human embryo. The relevant background to this decision, and the specific reliance upon “the dignity of the person” is undoubtedly to be found in the terms of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, Title I of which is headed “Dignity” and contains five articles . . .

I recall Steven ("The Stupidity of Dignity") Pinker's complaint that the invocation of "dignity" in conversations about science and its limits was a "conservative" "ploy."   I guess the Court of Justice disagrees. 

October 20, 2011 in Garnett, Rick | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

NCBQ and the Phoenix abortion case

The most recent issue of the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly (Vol. 11, no. 3; Autumn 2011) contains several articles that continue the discussion about the Phoenix abortion case and related matters. The issue contains articles by Rev. Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, OP (Abortion in a Case of Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension), Thomas A. Cavanaugh (Double-Effect Reasoning, Craniotomy, and Vital Conflicts), and Rev. Martin Rhonheimer (Vital Conflicts, Direct Killing, and Justice).

The NCBQ (edited by Ted Furton) is always well worth reading and this issue is no exception.

Richard M.

October 19, 2011 in Myers, Richard | Permalink | TrackBack (0)