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The City Of God And The Cities Of Men: A Response To Jason Carter, Randy Beck

Scholarly Works

Law school seminars sometimes educate the professor as much as the students. That proved true for me in the spring of 2004, when seventeen law students and two colleagues from other departments joined me for a seminar focused on ancient and contemporary perspectives on law found within various Christian theological traditions. One seminar student who repeatedly spurred my own thinking was Jason Carter. Particularly thought provoking was the paper Jason presented in the final weeks of the seminar.

The returns from the 2004 election suggested that Jason had been unusually prescient in his analysis of U.S. religious and political trends. …

Everything Lawyers Know About Polygamy Is Wrong, S. Crincoli (Sigman)

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Belief And Interpretation: Meditations On Pelikan's 'Interpreting The Bible And The Constitution, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

Jaroslav Pelikan's recently published collection of essays considers the similarities between biblical and legal hermeneutics. Although Pelikan offers an erudite and subtle account, I argue that he fails to consider a central question raised by the comparison: the extent to which belief is a prerequisite of interpretation. But the claim that we cannot genuinely interpret a document if we do not believe that it has something to say to us, if we do not anticipate that we can learn from the text, raises a difficulty. If belief is central to interpretation it would appear to consign interpretation to a wholly …