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Comments On ‘Whiteness As Contract’, Marissa Jackson Sow

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

Thank you so much, Jay, and thank you everyone for being here this morning. It’s an honor to be able to join you [now] even before I join you formally and it’s an equal honor to share this morning with professors Huq and Whitlow. I have looked up to and been in conversation with professor Huq specifically; to find out that we are co-panelists and also will be teaching contracts together is very inspiring indeed.

So, what I will try to do in the brief time that we have is talk a little bit about Whiteness as Contract, …

Reframing The Monuments: How To Address Confederate Statues In The United States, Jillian Fitzpatrick

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

This Note was written between September 2018 and March 2019 as part of St. John’s University School of Law’s two-semester Perspectives on Justice class. At the time that this Note was written, there was a growing urgency to address the Confederate monuments around the United States, but little had been done by states or the federal government. At the time, many states, including Virginia, had in place Heritage Protection Acts which made the removal or relocation of such monuments punishable under criminal law, thus tying the hands of the localities where the monuments were located. However, in just two …

Hearing Women: From Professor Hill To Dr. Ford, Stephanie M. Wildman

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

One of the recent traumas, another skirmish in today’s civilian conflict over what kind of society America will be, arose from Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony about sexual assault she had endured. Her composed, measured statement during the nowJustice Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearing exemplified bravery in the face of adversity. The Senate and the nation’s response to her testimony underscored the high stakes in the ongoing ideological conflict, beyond the obvious prize of a Supreme Court seat. Constituents in the current ideological battle had differing reactions to Ford’s testimony and to this hearing, reflecting a range of views about …

How The Boogeyman Saved Brett Kavanaugh, Cathren Page

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

We love to hate these boogeymen. When the societal narrative creates these invisible boogeymen, people can pour their rage against sexual abuse into these faceless antagonists. At the same time, the enraged survivors and protectors avoid conflicts with family, neighbors, colleagues, and social acquaintances who might actually commit or enable sexual abuse. We can dodge sticky questions regarding how a churchgoer, a judge, or an Ivy Leaguer could have committed a heinous act. The survivors can avoid all the victim-blaming backlash, threats of violence, and invalidation that accompanies reporting a sexual offense. Moreover, having less power on their own, …

Comments On Steven Smith, Pagans And Christians In The City, Michael P. Moreland

Journal of Catholic Legal Studies

(Excerpt)

One of the most interesting aspects of this generally very interesting book was the discussion of sexual morality in paganism and Christianity. I have thought for a while that much of the contemporary debate about religious freedom is not about religious freedom in a generic sense but instead about religious freedom in a very particular context—sex. But that is a descriptive point—much more challenging is trying to give an account of why sex should have come to be (or as Smith’s argument implies, has long been) the battlefield on which much of the fight over religious freedom takes place. …

Dialoguing With Paganism, Helen M. Alvare

Journal of Catholic Legal Studies

(Excerpt)

Professor Smith’s comparison of ancient and contemporary beliefs in the “immanent sacred” works well. By this I mean that it’s quite plausible, and accounts for quite a few contemporary claims, disputes, and movements in both law and culture.

The book’s implications for law are likely too complicated to allow for anything like its straightforward application in today’s religion clause contests. Still, it might indirectly assist traditional believers to lower the temperature of, or even avoid, such contests. I develop each of these points below.

Augustine's "Two Cities" And Steven Smith's Pagans And Christians, Brian Dunkle, S.J.

Journal of Catholic Legal Studies

(Excerpt)

Although there are many modern voices juxtaposing pagans and Christians, I want to focus on an ancient source, Augustine of Hippo’s City of God (against the Pagans), which is one of the inspirations for Smith’s title. While the bishop of Hippo shows up occasionally in Smith’s account—indeed, his conversion is central to Chapter Five, Looking beyond the World: The Christian Revolution—Augustine’s description of the “two cities,” Babylon and Jerusalem, makes only a brief appearance. So as a scholar of both historical theology and Augustine (and as someone innocent of constitutional legal theory), I suggest that the City …

A Tale Of Two Cities: Religious Freedom In A Secular Age, Anna Su

Journal of Catholic Legal Studies

(Excerpt)

Understanding the terms under which Christianity and paganism could coexist in antiquity thus gives us a semblance of an answer to the question posed early on in the book. In ancient Rome, Pliny asks why Christians were being subjected to legal sanctions, while in our present time, Douglas Laycock asks why people—referring to same-sex couples suing wedding photographers, florists, and bakers who object on religious grounds to their union—would insist on these services they neither need nor want? The paganism of ancient Rome welcomed a plurality of cults and religions but only up to a certain point. When Christians …

Many Cities, One Nation: A Response To Steven Smith's Pagans And Christians In The City, Bruce P. Frohnen

Journal of Catholic Legal Studies

(Excerpt)

In his treatment of contemporary legal issues and, more deeply, his analysis of the manner in which changing religious assumptions and goals shape the culture from which law naturally grows, Smith has provided both a strong critique of contemporary “secular” pieties and an explanation for the culture wars so often derided or minimized by those most determined to deconstruct traditional culture. Still, I would argue that Smith’s wide-ranging, radical rethinking of contemporary social disorder does not go far enough. As Smith’s discussion of contemporary judicial treatment of social structure makes clear, today’s legal elites are at heart totalitarian in …

Christians And Pagans, Abner S. Greene

Journal of Catholic Legal Studies

(Excerpt)

In this response paper, I will offer four thoughts. First, I’m not sure the contemporary picture is best described as pagans vs. Christians. Second, I question the subtle move throughout the book from a generative/creative understanding of God to seeing God as normative, as supervening in human affairs regarding right and wrong conduct. Third, I push back on the notion that theistic belief (or, perhaps, the very existence of God) is necessary to ground meaning and value. Fourth, I discuss some modern-day U.S. constitutional issues that Smith discusses as examples of pagans persecuting Christians: (a) state-sponsored religious symbols, (b) …

Ironies In The City: Reflections On Steven Smith's Pagans And Christians In The City, Perry Dane

Journal of Catholic Legal Studies

(Excerpt)

Nevertheless, some deep ironies and puzzles run through the text of Pagans and Christians. Smith is too careful and subtle to ignore these undercurrents entirely. But it will be worth bringing them to the surface, not only for their own sake but because they might help suggest an alternative to Smith’s most rough-edged claims. My aim in this essay is not merely to nitpick. Any work as magisterial as Smith’s book will generalize and elide along the way. But I do hope by the accumulation of details to suggest a fundamental worry that goes to the most charged …

Against Lgbt Exceptionalism In Religious Exemptions From Antidiscrimination Obligations, Carlos A. Ball

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

In my estimation, Tebbe is correct that contested legal and policy questions arising from the intersection of religious freedom and equality principles demand difficult normative work. But, after reading the book, I am not sure he realizes the extent to which his social coherence approach is historically driven. Whether through analogies from concrete, past cases or by abstracting normative principles from past cases, Tebbe is essentially looking at how the country has, in the past, accommodated religious freedom in the pursuit of other objectives to guide us through current religious liberty controversies involving LGBT rights and reproductive freedom.

Religious Freedom In An Egalitarian Age: Rejecting Doctrinal Nihilism In The Adjudication Of Religious Claims, Laura S. Underkuffler

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

Tebbe’s argument proceeds along two separate tracks. First, he rejects the arguments of academic skeptics and others that these conflicts are by nature something that is not amenable to the judicial task. Rather, he argues, conflicts between religious freedom and civil rights can be worked through by courts, using what he calls a “social coherence” approach. This does not, of itself, “pretend to determine unique answers to pressing substantive questions”; but it establishes a way to generate reasoned conclusions that are intrinsically superior to the ad hockery or nihilistic approach that skeptics assume.

Next, Tebbe combines this approach with …

In (Partial) Praise Of (Some) Compromise: Comments On Tebbe, Chad Flanders

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

There are four very brief sections to my comment on Tebbe’s book. The first suggests some skepticism about social coherentism, and its hope to provide a neutral method for adjudicating disputes. I apply this skepticism in the second part to Tebbe’s discussion of what counts as “harm” and how to measure it. The third and fourth parts deal with my favored way of dealing with our deep disagreements and compromises when it comes to associations and employment. I should add here that nothing I say is meant to take away from Tebbe’s achievement in his book. The writing is …

Tebbe And Reflective Equilibrium, Andrew Koppelman

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

The basic method of Nelson Tebbe’s fine book, “Religious Freedom in an Egalitarian Age,” is what John Rawls called “reflective equilibrium”. Rawls famously proposed a theory of justice that aimed to be “strictly deductive.” His deductions, however, take place within a larger account of justification that he calls “reflective equilibrium,” in which we try to bring our considered moral judgments into line with our more general principles. “A conception of justice cannot be deduced from selfevident premises or conditions on principles; instead, its justification is the matter of the mutual support of many considerations, of everything fitting together into …

What Is The "Social" In "Social Coherence?" Commentary On Nelson Tebbe's Religious Freedom In An Egalitarian Age, Patricia Marino

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

It is my pleasure to comment on Nelson Tebbe’s deep and engaging book. In addition to its careful legal analysis, Religious Freedom in an Egalitarian Age bears on important philosophical issues concerning values, moral reasoning and the justification of evaluative beliefs. I find these issues especially interesting because I’ve engaged with some of them myself. Methodologically, Religious Freedom in an Egalitarian Age makes use of a concept of social coherence, and my work also considers questions of how coherence functions in evaluative contexts. What does it mean for our value judgments to fit together in an appropriate way? How …

Attempting To Engage In Socially Coherent Dialogue About Religious Liberty And Equality, Alan Brownstein

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

Most book reviews reflect the reviewer’s final conclusions about the author’s finished work. This review is more of a snapshot of the lengthy dialogue I have been engaged in for several months with Nelson Tebbe, the author of the book being reviewed. The symposium conference organized by the St. John’s Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development in September 2016, invited several church-state scholars to comment on a draft manuscript of Nelson Tebbe’s forthcoming book, Religious Freedom in an Egalitarian Age. However, the book was not fully completed when this multi-participant dialogue began.

Reply: Conscience And Equality, Nelson Tebbe

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

In this Reply, I explore some larger questions that have been prompted by the book but that fell outside its focus on the interaction between religious freedom and civil rights law. Spurred by the responses, but also independent of them, I examine the implications of my arguments for an egalitarian theory of the First Amendment. Though it is of course impossible to fully develop such a vision in this Reply, there is room to begin that work. Along the way, I answer some of the more pointed questions posed in these six responses.

Vicarious Charity: Social Responsibility And Catholic Social Teaching, Paula Dalley

Journal of Catholic Legal Studies

(Excerpt)

This Article begins with a brief introduction to the CSR debate. Part II describes the legal role of various human actors in the corporation, and Part III describes the legal restrictions on those actors’ socially responsible, but unauthorized, decisions. Part IV describes in some detail the relevant social teaching of the Catholic Church and explains that it does not apply to corporations or other corporate actors. Part V then describes the appropriate application of Catholic social doctrine to economic actors.

"There Are No Ordinary People": Christian Humanism And Christian Legal Thought, Richard W. Garnett

Journal of Catholic Legal Studies

(Excerpt)

It seems to me that what my colleague, teacher, and friend, the late Robert E. Rodes, Jr., liked to call “the legal enterprise” is the project of coordinating, structuring, facilitating, and constraining human activities in a way that promotes and secures the common good and, thereby, promotes the flourishing of human persons. This project proceeds from, and depends on, an account of what the human person is and is for—a “moral anthropology.” I have argued elsewhere, for example, that certain “truths about the nature, goods, and destiny of the human person, namely, that we were made by God—whose love …

The Pre-History Of Subsidiarity In Leo Xiii, Michael P. Moreland

Journal of Catholic Legal Studies

(Excerpt)

Part of the confusion over subsidiarity—but also, perhaps, an aspect of the principle’s richness—is its combination, then, of both “libertarian” and “communitarian” elements. Progress in our understanding and application of subsidiarity will require a careful assessment of these considerations and determining when intervention or assistance [subsidium] from a higher authority is needed and when devolution of responsibility is warranted. More precisely, we will need to determine when authority is properly located at a higher level and when authority is properly recognized in the smaller community. This conclusion, in turn, will require a discussion of subsidiarity’s political theoretical …

Children Into Men: Lawyers And The Law In Three Novels, Gregory J. Sullivan

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Defend The Rights Of The Poor, Gordon J. Beggs

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Why Informed Consent? Human Experimentation And The Ethics Of Autonomy, Richard W. Garnett

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Aids In The Workplace: Discrimination By Ignorance

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

What Churches Can Expect From "Gay Rights" Laws: A Preview Of Iowa's Sexual Orientation Bill, Lincoln C. Oliphant

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Critical Developments In The Vow Of Poverty Area And Update On Unrelated Business, Charles M. Whelan, S.J., Professor Of Law, Fordham Law School; Office Of General Counsel, United States Catholic Conference

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

The Canonical Concept Of Marital Consent: Roman Law Influences, Rev. Joseph N. Perry

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Civil Disobedience And Natural Law, Mark R. Macguigan

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Natural And Moral Obligations, Pedro F. Entenza-Escobar

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.