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.

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Mark Rienzi on the Transgender Cases at SCOTUS

Mark Rienzi (CUA and Becket) has shared with Mirror of Justice the following report and analysis:

Transgender cases hit SCOTUS

This week, the Supreme Court is set to consider several cases dealing with the hot-button topic of gender transitions for minors.  Although this has been a major political firestorm for the last couple of years, SCOTUS has largely stayed out of the fray.  The Bostock decision established the right for transgender employees to be free from certain types of discrimination on the job. The Court has so far avoided ruling on Title IX’s application to transgender students, dismissing one case as moot and waiting to weigh in on state laws requiring students to play on sports teams aligned to their natal sex, not current gender identity.

But sooner or later, the Court will have to weigh in on the limits of Bostock, as well as the national controversies over how far parents, schools, and doctors should go in supporting gender transitions for minors.

A trio of cases at Friday’s conference presents a surprising contrast in how state officials handle these issues.

First, the Solicitor General and a group of parents, represented by the ACLU, have asked the Court to consider challenges to laws banning medical transition procedures for minors. Tennessee and Kentucky (along with numerous other states) have banned such procedures, and the challenges to their laws have now reached the court. The A­­CLU has asked the Court to consider its parental rights argument. The SG has taken a different tack, asking the Court to focus on whether the bans violate the Equal Protection Clause as an impermissible sex-based classification.  The states have argued there is not yet a circuit split, citing the Eight Circuit’s pending en banc decision on a similar law in Arkansas. Whether the Court takes this set of cases or waits for a later opportunity, it seems inevitable that the nationwide controversy will eventually end up at SCOTUS.

A third petition raises a troubling question of parental rights in Indiana. Indiana is among the states that have banned such medical procedures for minors, but state officials nonetheless removed a teenager from his parents’ custody because they refused to use his preferred pronouns and agree to treat him as a girl. In M.C. and J.C. v. Indiana Dep’t of Child Services, Mary and Jeremy Cox have appealed the state’s decision to remove their teenage son from their home and place him in a home where “she is [ac]cepted for who she is.” The state refused to return the teen to his parents, even after an investigation showed that all allegations of abuse and neglect were unsubstantiated. The court pointed to an eating disorder and reasoned that, if the child were returned to his legally fit parents, he would experience distress due to the disagreement over gender. That was grounds to keep him out of his parents’ home until he turned 18.

The Coxes kept appealing, hoping their son might come home, but Indiana and its courts refused to return the child.  Now they have asked the Supreme Court to review their case, hoping to overturn a decision that could continue to have dire consequences for their family and put them at risk of further state intervention for their younger children. Our team at Becket is proud to represent them. But Indiana, confoundingly, continues to defend the decision. The state reasons that because it succeeded in keeping A.C. from his parents until he turned 18, his case is now moot. It’s a dangerous argument that would set a dangerous precedent nationwide: parents lose their legal recourse against state officials who take a teen away, since teens will soon reach the age of majority and their cases will be moot, too.

It’s not just Indiana. California and Minnesota have passed laws which allow state courts to take jurisdiction over minors for the purpose of allowing them to receive medical interventions for their transitions. Maine is considering a similar law. Washington state has passed a law that allows teens to effectively emancipate themselves by going to shelters which will help facilitate social and medical transitions—it’s then up to the state, not the parents, how long the teens can stay. The state doesn’t even have to notify the parents of the child’s whereabouts.

The Supreme Court will soon have to decide the rights of loving parents who don’t support a child’s desire to engage in a social or medical transition.  It should do so now, not years from now, when more families have been torn apart. And the Coxes’ case presents an unusually strong scenario: the state admits the parents are fit, so there are no overlapping issues about state law on abuse. The fact that A.C. has turned 18 makes the case an especially clean vehicle—there is no danger of changed circumstances once the Court grants cert. 

These disturbing cases will only continue to multiply until, and unless, parental rights are established. Loving families should not have their children removed because the parents disagree with state officials about gender.

March 13, 2024 in Garnett, Rick | Permalink

Friday, February 16, 2024

Duncan on School Choice and Religious Freedom

Prof. Rick Duncan (Nebraska) has a new paper up called "Why School Choice Is Necessary for Religious Liberty and Freedom of Belief."  Amen!  Here's a bit:

Education is not value-free; indeed, it is value-laden. And in a country as divided as ours, we no longer share common values and common truths. We have competing versions of what is good, what is true, what is fair, what is just, what is morally good, and what is beautiful. Moreover, we are at odds over the most important question in life—whether God exists and whether His Word is relevant to a quality education.  And a one-size-fits-all K–12 curriculum cannot possibly serve all these competing versions of the good life. Although I think competition is always good for the quality and efficiency of any product or service, my argument in this Article is not about higher standardized test scores or better mastery of subjects and skills. My perspective is based on First Amendment values of freedom of religion, thought, and belief formation. In other words, I believe that school choice is necessary for religious liberty and for freedom of thought and belief. If religious and intellectual autonomy are to survive and thrive in a deeply divided, pluralistic nation such as ours, parents must be free to choose an appropriate education for their children, without having to sacrifice the benefit of public funding of education. To put it succinctly, educational funds should be directed to children and their parents, not to strictly secular government schools.

I tried to make a similar argument, a (long!) while back, in this paper, "The Right Questions about School Choice: Education, Religious Freedom, and the Common Good."  Time flies!

February 16, 2024 in Garnett, Rick | Permalink

Sunday, February 4, 2024

20 Years of Mirror of Justice

This weekend, the Mirror of Justice blog turned 20 years old.  Here is a link to our first post (authored not by me, as the link suggests, but by Mark Sargent):

Welcome to Mirror of Justice, a group blog created by a group of Catholic law professors interested in discovering how our Catholic perspective can inform our understanding of the law. Indeed, we ask whether the great wealth of the Catholic intellectual and moral tradition offers a basis for creating a distinctive Catholic legal theory- one distinct from both secular and other religious legal theories. Can Catholic moral theology, Catholic Social Thought and the Catholic natural law tradition offer insights that are both critical and constructive, and which can contribute to the dialogue within both the legal academy and the broader polity? In particular, we ask whether the profoundly counter-cultural elements in Catholicism offer a basis for rethinking the nature of law in our society. The phrase "Mirror of Justice" is one of the traditional appellations of Our Lady, and thus a fitting inspiration for this effort.

A few things about this blog and us:

1. The members of this blog group represent a broad spectrum of Catholic opinion, ranging from the "conservative" to the "liberal", to the extent that those terms make sense in the Catholic context. Some are politically conservative or libertarian, others are on the left politically. Some are highly orthodox on religious matters, some are in a more questioning relationship with the Magisterium on some issues, and with a broad view of the legitimate range of dissent within the Church. Some of us are "Commonweal Catholics"; others read and publish in First Things or Crisis. We are likely to disagree with each other as often as we agree. For more info about us, see the bios linked in the sidebar.

2. We all believe that faith-based discourse is entirely legitimate in the academy and in the public square, and that religious values need not be bracketed in academic or public conversation. We may differ on how such values should be expressed or considered in those conversations or in public decisionmaking.

3. This blog will not focus primarily on the classic constitutional questions of Church and State, although some of our members are interested in those questions and may post on them from time to time. We are more interested in tackiling the larger jurisprudential questions and in discussing how Catholic thought and belief should influence the way we think about corporate law, products liability or capital punishment or any other problem in or area of the law.

4, We are resolutely ecumenical about this blog. We do not want to converse only among ourselves or with other Catholics. We are eager to hear from those of other faith traditions or with no religious beliefs at all. We will post responses (at our editorial discretion, of course.) See "Contact Us" in the sidebar.

5. While this blog will be highly focused on our main topic, we may occasionally blog on other legal/theoretical matters, or on non-legal developments in Catholicism (or on baseball, the other church to which I belong.)

6. We will be linking to relevant papers by the bloggers in the sidebar. Comments welcome!

It is, I suppose, cringe-inducingly obvious to note that a lot has changed since February of 2004. (There were a lot of back-and-forth postings about the Bush v. Kerry election!) A fair bit of the conversation among law-types has migrated to Twitter, Substack, etc. And yet, blogs survive (and, in some well-known cases, continue to thrive). 

It continues to be my view -- as I tried to express in this very early post of mine, and in a lot of posts since -- that at the heart of any "Catholic legal theory" has to be the Christian proposal about moral anthropology, that is, about what it means and why it matters to be human.  As I said in this short essay, "persons" are "the point of the law."

Ad multos annos!

 

 

February 4, 2024 in Garnett, Rick | Permalink

Sunday, January 28, 2024

"The Servant Lawyer"

One of the legal academy's true treasures, Bob Cochran, has a new book out, called The Servant Lawyer:  Facing the Challenges of Christian Faith in Everyday Law Practice.  Cochran draws not only on his own crucial body of work on religious lawyering, but also on the thought and legacy of our mutual friend and mentor, Tom Shaffer. 

Here's the blurb from that huge Bezos website:

Most lawyers, from Wall Street to the county seat, spend their days drafting documents, negotiating with other attorneys, trying cases, researching the law, and counseling clients. How does this everyday law practice relate to Jesus' call to follow him in servanthood?

With decades of experience in the law office, courtroom, and classroom, Robert F. Cochran Jr. explores Jesus' call on lawyers to serve both individual clients and the common good. Cochran pulls back the curtain with stories from his own career and from the legal community to address a wide range of challenges posed by law practice, including counseling clients, planning trial tactics, navigating tensions with coworkers, and handling temptations toward cynicism and greed. This honest and accessible book

  • shares wisdom from an experienced practitioner and master teacher
  • addresses real-world situations and relationships experienced by most lawyers
  • charts the way toward a truly Christian practice of everyday law

For students considering a career in law as well as for seasoned attorneys, The Servant Lawyer casts an encouraging vision for how lawyers can love and serve their neighbor in every facet of their work.

Check it out!

January 28, 2024 in Garnett, Rick | Permalink

Friday, January 26, 2024

Preziosi on Biden (and Trump) on the Federal Death Penalty

Dominic Preziosi has a piece in Commonweal called "Executioner in Chief" in which, inter alia, he criticizes the decision by the Biden Administration's Department of Justice to seek the death penalty for Payton Gendron, shot and killed ten black people at a Buffalo supermarket. As Preziosi observes, this decision seems inconsistent with Biden's stated (although not always consistent) opposition to capital punishment and his promises to do what is within his power to abolish the federal death penalty (or, at least, to restore the effective moratorium that had been in place on federal executions until 2020.

Like Preziosi, I would welcome legislation that repealed the death penalty at the federal level. (I would be less enthusiastic about a judicial decision that purported to invalidate the federal death penalty, because I am confident that the Constitution, correctly understood, permits the use of capital punishment for at least some federal crimes. And, while prosecutorial discretion is, appropriately, a fact of life, I am not entirely comfortable with executively-annouced moratoria that amount to non-enforcement of duly enacted federal law. But, put these reservations aside.)

There was a time, during the early years of the Obama administration, when abolition of the federal death penalty was politically possible, and that administration failed to take advantage of that opportunity.  At present, abolition is probably not politically feasible. And, in any event, it seems that -- given all the political givens -- the administration has decided (perhaps, for reasons like those that motivated then-Governor Bill Clinton in the Rector case) to shelve, at least for now, its earlier professed abolitionism.

January 26, 2024 in Garnett, Rick | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wednesday, January 17, 2024

USCCB releases report on threats to religious freedom

Thanks to my local bishop, Kevin Rhoades, for his leadership on this new report from the USCCB.  As he said, "Catholics have a vital role to play in defending religious freedom and promoting the common good”. 

Here is a bit from "The State of Religious Liberty in the United States":

This report identifies the top five threats to religious liberty in 2024 as follows:  

  • attacks against houses of worship, especially in relation to the Israel-Hamas conflict  
  • the Section 1557 regulation from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which will likely impose a mandate on doctors to perform gender transition procedures and possibly abortions  
  • threats to religious charities serving newcomers, which will likely increase as the issue of immigration gains prominence in the election  
  • suppression of religious speech on marriage and sexual difference 
  • the EEOC’s Pregnant Workers Fairness Act regulations, which aim to require religious employers to be complicit in abortion in an unprecedented way 

 

January 17, 2024 in Garnett, Rick | Permalink

Monday, January 15, 2024

Title IX and the Assault on Hillsdale College

In the Wall Street Journal, Tunku Varadarajan has a piece called "Title IX and the Assault on Hillsdale College."  It's important.  Here's a bit:

The lawsuit seeks to impose Title IX’s strictures on Hillsdale, arguing that the college’s tax-exempt status under Section 501(c)(3) of the Tax Code “operates as a subsidy, which is a form of federal financial assistance.”

Mr. Arnn sees a darker ideological intent in this claim. “This is about the kind of society some people want us to have,” he says. “The principle that because you have a tax deduction you’re spending government money can’t mean anything other than that all money, in principle, belongs to the government.” This “tax-deduction thing,” as he calls the argument, “would be a massive expansion of government authority in one go. And of course, there are many people who seek that in America.”

Arnn is correct.  The notion that a tax exemption -- that is, a decision by the government not to impose a tax -- "counts" as a subsidy is a dangerous one, in a community that attaches any importance to civil society.

January 15, 2024 in Garnett, Rick | Permalink

Rob Vischer on "Martin Luther King Jr. and the Morality of Legal Practice: Lessons in Love and Justice"

Our own Rob Vischer ("el presidente" now, I guess!) published, a few years ago, a book called Martin Luther King Jr. and the Morality of Legal Practice:  Lessons in Love and Justice.  Here is the Amaz-n blurb:

This book seeks to reframe our understanding of the lawyer's work by exploring how Martin Luther King Jr. built his advocacy on a coherent set of moral claims regarding the demands of love and justice in light of human nature. King never shirked from staking out challenging claims of moral truth, even while remaining open to working with those who rejected those truths. His example should inspire the legal profession as a reminder that truth-telling, even in a society that often appears morally balkanized, has the capacity to move hearts and minds. At the same time, his example should give the profession pause, for King's success would have been impossible absent his substantive views about human nature and the ends of justice. This book is an effort to reframe our conception of morality's relevance to professionalism through the lens provided by the public and prophetic advocacy of Dr. King.

January 15, 2024 in Garnett, Rick | Permalink

Wednesday, January 10, 2024

Steve Smith on "Was Thomas More a Hypocrite?"

The title of this essay, by Steve Smith, in the latest issue of The Lamp, might seem designed to jar, even to scandalize, Mirror of Justice readers.  But, press on!  First, it's by Steve Smith so . . . 'nuff said.  Smith reminds us that many of More's friends thought him -- at the time -- less a heroic martyr than one wallowing in (his words) “stubbornness and obstinacy.”  Later, some would sniff at the talk of More, the champion of "conscience", given that he had, well, punished heretics.  Hypocrisy?

Smith explores the possibility that More meant something by "conscience" very different than what we mean today (i.e., "I gotta be me."):

But if we understand conscience more substantively as acting on beliefs based on the collective understanding of Christendom, as More did, then it seems that he was not being inconsistent after all. That is because, sincere or not, the Protestants were not acting on conscience—not as he understood it. Rather, they were acting against conscience. Indeed, they were openly and unapologetically acting against conscience by setting up their own personal judgement in opposition to and in defiance of the doctrines held by the Church and by Christians generally. Martin Luther had been proudly explicit at Worms on exactly this point (“Here I stand, I can do no other”). For More, this course was not only hubristic and reckless and self-contradictory; it was precisely the opposite of what it meant to act on conscience.

But in More’s view the Protestants were acting against conscience in an even more basic and threatening way. They were not merely acting against conscience themselves; they were working to make it impossible for Christians generally to act on conscience.

Check it out.

January 10, 2024 in Garnett, Rick | Permalink

Friday, December 29, 2023

Happy Feast of St. Thomas Becket

I'm re-printing a Becket-Day post from our own Michael Moreland:

Today is the Feast of St. Thomas Becket, murdered on this date in 1170. I've reposted below a post from 2012 with an excerpt from John Guy's fine biography of Becket.

And for those looking to learn more about medieval English law and its legacy, I commend the exhibit on Magna Carta now on display at the Library of Congress in Washington, including a rare viewing of the Lincoln Cathedral original of Magna Carta. It was Henry II's feckless youngest son John, of course, who was forced to issue Magna Carta in 1215. And the (likely) principal author of Magna Carta was Becket's successor as Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, who, like Becket, was forced into exile in France by the King but returned to England to lead the struggle against an overweening monarch. Recall that the first clause of Magna Carta is: "That We have granted to God, and by this present charter have confirmed for us and our heirs in perpetuity, that the English Church shall be free, and shall have its rights undiminished, and its liberties unimpaired." ("In primis concessisse Deo et hac presenti carta nostra confirmasse, pro nobis et heredibus nostris in perpetuum quod Anglicana ecclesia libera sit, et habeat jura sua integra, et libertates suas illesas.")

From December 29, 2012:

A blog devoted to Catholic legal theory can hardly let pass today's Feast of St. Thomas Becket (c.1181-1170). Peter Glenville's 1964 film with Richard Burton as Becket and Peter O'Toole as Henry II is a classic. More recently, the eminent Tudor historian John Guy (author of a number of fine books on Thomas More) has written a splendid biography of Becket--a taste here:

For his attack on the church's claim of immunity from secular jurisdiction, Anglo-American lawyers and constitutional historians in the nineteenth century would put on rose-colored spectacles and reinvent Henry as a legal reformer avant la lettre, a pioneer of fair trials and equality before the law who paved the way for some of the most important clauses later incorporated into Magna Carta and the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. In reality, however, his actions showed that the rights of the accused could always be overridden by political considerations and the king's will. Far from remodeling the legal system and the courts in the interests of justice and the common good, Henry sought to strengthen his own power. And far from being a pioneer of "equitable" or "impartial" justice, he happily presided over his own court in the Battle Abbey case and at Becket's trial for embezzlement and false accounting at Northampton, acting simultaneously as chief counsel for the prosecution, judge, and jury. In response, Thomas would prove that a middle-class Londoner could transcend his social origins and challenge a ruler who he believed was degenerating into a tyrant, but it would cost him his life. Thomas More would take a similar path in Henry VIII's reign, and it may be no coincidence that More's working library contained many of the same books as Becket's.

John Guy, Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel (Random House, 2012), p. 338.

December 29, 2023 in Garnett, Rick, Moreland, Michael | Permalink