Law Commons^™

Religion And Public Reason In The Politics Of Biotechnology, J. Benjamin Hurlbut

Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy

Questions about the relevance of religious views to public policy have been central in debates over the governance of biotechnology since the 1960s. This article offers an empirical analysis of moments of deliberative politics surrounding human embryo research, primarily within public bioethics bodies. I examine how these bodies have used the idea of public reason as developed in deliberative democratic theory to differentiate between secular and religious reasons. I argue that scientific authority is made to play a powerful, but largely unacknowledged role in constructing these categories by contributing to definitions of the range of “reasonable” pluralism. I show that …

Legal Ethics And Jurisprudence From Within Religious Congregations, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

The Rabbis of the Talmud were a community for moral discernment—a community commissioned by God to interpret the Word of God. Their story is theology. Michael Scanlon, a modem Roman Catholic thinker, assumes such a theology and adds anthropology.

The Rabbis assume and Scanlon describes a community for ethical discernment. It is a perception—somewhat empirical, somewhat theological—that is important and neglected for lawyers in academic jurisprudence and in religious legal ethics. My argument here is that what lawyers should do about "ethical dilemmas" in professional practice can be discerned in the sort of community the Talmud describes, and Scanlon describes, …