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Full-Text Articles in Jurisprudence
The Liberty Of The Church: Source, Scope And Scandal, Patrick Mckinley Brennan
The Liberty Of The Church: Source, Scope And Scandal, Patrick Mckinley Brennan
Working Paper Series
This article was presented at a conference, and is part of a symposium, on "The Freedom of the Church in the Modern Era." The article argues that the liberty of the Church, libertas Ecclesiae, is not a mere metaphor, pace the views of some other contributions to the conference and symposium and of the mentality mostly prevailing over the last five hundred years. The argument is that the Church and her directly God-given rights are ontologically irreducible in a way that the rights of, say, the state of California or even of the United States are not. Based on a …
Resisting The Grand Coalition In Favor Of The Status Quo By Giving Full Scope To The Libertas Ecclesiae, Patrick Mckinley Brennan
Resisting The Grand Coalition In Favor Of The Status Quo By Giving Full Scope To The Libertas Ecclesiae, Patrick Mckinley Brennan
Working Paper Series
This paper argues that questions about "religious freedom" must be subordinated to the fundamental principle of the liberty of the Church, libertas Ecclesiae. The First Amendment's agnosticism with respect to the liberty of the Church is not ultimately normative. Catholics and others who merely seek religious "accommodation," as with the HHS mandate, for example, are agents of a status quo that illegitimately has comfortable self-preservation as its highest value. It is Catholic doctrine that "creation was for the sake of the Church," not for the sake of, say, religious freedom. The paper argues that the contingent constitution of …
“Religious Freedom,” The Individual Mandate, And Gifts: On Why The Church Is Not A Bomb Shelter, Patrick Mckinley Brennan
“Religious Freedom,” The Individual Mandate, And Gifts: On Why The Church Is Not A Bomb Shelter, Patrick Mckinley Brennan
Working Paper Series
The Health and Human Services' regulatory requirement that all but a narrow set of "religious" employers provide contraceptives to employees is an example of what Robert Post and Nancy Rosenblum refer to as a growing "congruence" between civil society's values and the state's legally enacted policy. Catholics and many others have resisted the HHS requirement on the ground that it violates "religious freedom." They ask (in the words of Cardinal Dolan) to be "left alone" by the state. But the argument to be "left alone" overlooks or suppresses the fact that the Catholic Church understands that it is its role …
The Mighty Work Of Making Nations Happy: A Response To James Davison Hunter, Patrick Mckinley Brennan
The Mighty Work Of Making Nations Happy: A Response To James Davison Hunter, Patrick Mckinley Brennan
Working Paper Series
This article is an invited response to James Davison Hunter’s much-discussed book To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (Oxford University Press, 2010). Hunter, a sociologist at UVA and a believing Protestant, claims that law’s capacity to contribute to social change is “mostly illusory” and that Christians, therefore, should practice “faithful presence” in the public square rather than seek to influence law directly. My response is that it is, in fact, law’s stunning ability to alter and limit available choices that makes it an object of deservedly fierce contest. The wild …
Subsidiarity In The Tradition Of Catholic Social Doctrine, Patrick Mckinley Brennan
Subsidiarity In The Tradition Of Catholic Social Doctrine, Patrick Mckinley Brennan
Working Paper Series
This chapter is an invited contribution to the first English-language comparative study of subsidiarity, M. Evans and A. Zimmerman (eds.), Subsidiarity in Comparative Perspective (forthcoming Springer, 2013). The concept of subsidiarity does work in many and varied legal contexts today, but the concept originated in Catholic social doctrine. The Catholic understanding of subsidiarity (or subsidiary function) is the subject of this chapter. Subsidiarity is often described as a norm calling for the devolution of power or for performing social functions at the lowest possible level. In Catholic social doctrine, it is neither. Subsidiarity is the fixed and immovable ontological principle …
Two Cheers For The Constitution Of The United States: A Response To Professor Lee J. Strang, Patrick Mckinley Brennan
Two Cheers For The Constitution Of The United States: A Response To Professor Lee J. Strang, Patrick Mckinley Brennan
Working Paper Series
This article is an invited response to Professor Lee Strang’s article Originalism and the Aristotelian Tradition: Virtue’s Home in Originalism, 80 Fordham L. Rev. 1997 (2012). Strang defends original public meaning originalism from a virtue theoretic perspective that he traces to the “central Western tradition” and ultimately to Aristotle. I reply that those committed to that tradition do better (1) to reject original pubic meaning originalism, (2) to embrace some version of original intent originalism, and (3) to defend the original intent meaning of the U.S. Constitution only with important reservations and on certain conditions. The original sin of …
Legal Affinities: Explorations In The Legal Form Of Thought, Patrick Mckinley Brennan
Legal Affinities: Explorations In The Legal Form Of Thought, Patrick Mckinley Brennan
Working Paper Series
This is my Introduction to Legal Affinities: Explorations in the Legal Form of Thought (forthcoming 2012) (co-edited with H. Jefferson Powell and Jack Sammons), a volume of essays dedicated to exploring the work of Joseph Vining. The Introduction introduces Vining’s phenomenology of law and surveys the themes and topics developed by the volume’s eight authors: Joseph Vining, Judge John T. Noonan, Jr., Rev. John McCausland, H. Jefferson Powell, Jack Sammons, Steve Smith, James Boyd White, and Patrick Brennan.
Delivering The Goods: Herein Of Mead, Delegations, And Authority, Patrick Mckinley Brennan
Delivering The Goods: Herein Of Mead, Delegations, And Authority, Patrick Mckinley Brennan
Working Paper Series
This paper argues, first, that the natural law position, according to which it is the function of human law and political authorities to instantiate certain individual goods and the common good of the political community, does not entail judges' having the power or authority to speak the natural law directly. It goes on to argue, second, that lawmaking power/authority must be delegated by the people or their representatives. It then argues, third, that success in making law depends not just on the exercise of delegated power/authority, but also on the exercise of care and deliberation or, in the article's terms, …
Public Law, Private Law, And Legal Science, Chaim Saiman
Public Law, Private Law, And Legal Science, Chaim Saiman
Working Paper Series
This essay explores the historical and conceptual connections between private law and nineteenth century classical legal science from the perspective of German, American, and Jewish law. In each context, legal science flourished when scholars examined the confined doctrines traditional to private law, but fell apart when applied to public, administrative and regulatory law. Moving to the contemporary context, while traditional private law scholarship retains a prominent position in German law and academia, American law has increasingly shifted its focus from the language of substantive private law to a legal regime centered on public and procedural law. The essay concludes by …
Differentiating Church And State (Without Losing The Church), Patrick Mckinley Brennan
Differentiating Church And State (Without Losing The Church), Patrick Mckinley Brennan
Working Paper Series
There is an ongoing debate about whether the U.S. Constitution includes -- or should be interpreted to include -- a principle of "church autonomy." Catholic doctrine and political theology, by contrast, clearly articulated a principle of "libertas ecclesiae," liberty of the church, when during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the Church differentiated herself from the state. This article explores the meaning and origin of the doctrine of the libertas ecclesiae and the proper relationship among churches, civil society, and government. In doing so, it highlights the points at which church and state should cooperate and the points at which …
“What’S The Matter With You Catholics?” Soundings In Catholic Social Thought: Traditions In Turmoil. By Mary Ann Glendon, Patrick Mckinley Brennan
“What’S The Matter With You Catholics?” Soundings In Catholic Social Thought: Traditions In Turmoil. By Mary Ann Glendon, Patrick Mckinley Brennan
Working Paper Series
This review essay of Mary Ann Glendon's Traditions in Turmoil (2006) explores such topics as tradition, moral discourse, human rights, subsidiarity, natural law, the common good, civil society, and constitutional and statutory interpretation. In doing so, it provides an introduction both to Catholic social thought and to the thought of Bernard Lonergan.
Locating Authority In Law, And Avoiding The Authoritarianism Of 'Textualism', Patrick Mckinley Brennan
Locating Authority In Law, And Avoiding The Authoritarianism Of 'Textualism', Patrick Mckinley Brennan
Working Paper Series
Much modern jurisprudence attempts to move the locus of authority away from people with authority in order to locate it instead, for example, in rules or texts. This article argues that authority, wherever it exists, is a quality of the actions of persons. The article mounts this argument by showing how Justice Scalia's textualism is the legal analogue of a largely discredited form of "Christian positivism," one that leads to a form of authoritarianism. The article goes on to argue that authorianism can be avoided only by individuals' and their communities' becoming authoritative, including in the making and enforcement of …
Jesus’ Legal Theory—A Rabbinic Interpretation, Chaim Saiman
Jesus’ Legal Theory—A Rabbinic Interpretation, Chaim Saiman
Working Paper Series
This article locates the ancient debates between Jesus and the Talmudic rabbis within the discourse of contemporary legal theory. By engaging in a comparative reading of both Gospel and rabbinic texts, I show how Jesus and his rabbinic interlocutors sparred over questions we now conceptualize as the central concerns of jurisprudence. Whereas the rabbis approach theological, ethical and moral issues through an analytical, lawyerly interpretation of a dense network of legal rules, Jesus openly questions whether law is the appropriate medium to structure social relationships and resolve interpersonal conflicts. Through an examination of Talmudic sources, this paper argues the controversies …