Digital Commons Network^™

John And June Mary Makdisi: An Intellectual And Moral Journey, Siegfried Wiessner, Roza Pati

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

John and June Mary Makdisi have been our friends and treasured colleagues for many a year. It is with exceptional delight that we present these lines and this volume of intellectual contributions of friends, in the global university tradition of an hommage, a Festschrift celebrating their professional and personal contributions to our St. Thomas Law family on the occasion of their retirement. This Festschrift is also a vessel of admiration, respect, gratitude, warm wishes and prayers for God's grace and blessings for the magic of their new journey.

John The Theologian: Towards Integrating Law And Religion, Gordon Butler

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

Every dean leaves an impact on the law school they serve and its faculty. St. Thomas Law Dean Makdisi supported and encouraged Professor Siegfried Wiessner's effort in creating an LL.M. program in Intercultural Human Rights. While others will laud his many accomplishments as dean in the J.D. program, his impact on the religious heritage and Catholic mission of St. Thomas Law was greatest in the LL.M. program.

The Transformation Of Marriage As A State Institution, John Makdisi, June Mary Zekan Makdisi

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

The first section of this essay explores why the good of children requires the institution of marriage to promote the procreation of children by the act of physical-spiritual love between a man and a woman. The second section explores why the good of children requires the institution of marriage to promote the upbringing of children by the lasting, exclusive, and faithful commitment of the couple. The third section explains why Obergefell's removal of the requirement of a legal union between a man and a woman as an essential aspect of marriage not only destroys the function of the marriage institution …

Catholic Social Teaching: A Volume Of Scholarly Essays, Gerard V. Bradley

Books

Gerard V. Bradley and E. Christian Brugger eds.Catholic social teaching (CST) refers to the corpus of authoritative ecclesiastical teaching, usually in the form of papal encyclicals, on social matters, beginning with Pope Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum (1891) and running through Pope Francis. CST is not a social science and its texts are not pragmatic primers for social activists. It is a normative exercise of Church teaching, a kind of comprehensive applied - although far from systematic - social moral theology. This volume is a scholarly engagement with this 130-year-old documentary tradition. Its twenty-three essays aim to provide a constructive, …

The Transformation Of Marriage As A State Institution, John Makdisi, June Mary Zekan Makdisi

Faculty Articles

The first section of this essay explores why the good of children requires the institution of marriage to promote the procreation of children by the act of physical-spiritual love between a man and a woman. The second section explores why the good of children requires the institution of marriage to promote the upbringing of children by the lasting, exclusive, and faithful commitment of the couple. The third section explains why Obergefell's removal of the requirement of a legal union between a man and a woman as an essential aspect of marriage not only destroys the function of the marriage institution …

John The Theologian: Towards Integrating Law And Religion, Gordon T. Butler

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Review Of Chaim Saiman's The Rabbinic Idea Of Law, Suzanne Last Stone

Articles

The article reviews Chaim Saiman's Halakhah: The Rabbinic Idea of Law, highlighting its contribution to understanding rabbinic law as a cultural and educational force. Saiman's work bridges legal and cultural scholarship by emphasizing halakhah's dual role as both regulatory and expressive, drawing on Robert Cover's paideic model of law and Lawrence Rosen's concept of law as cosmology. The book explores how Talmudic discourse embodies this duality, blending legal reasoning with moral, theological, and ethical inquiry, and examines the tension between maintaining religious meaning and legal detail.

An Analysis Of St. Thomas Aquinas’S Position On The Relationship Between Justice And Legality, Wei Yao, Kenny Chng

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This paper is directed at a deep investigation of Thomas Aquinas's position on the relationship between justice and legality, a perennial debate in legal philosophy - are unjust laws laws at all? Modern natural law theorists taking contradictory positions all claim to be faithful to Aquinas's ideas on the matter. Yet, they cannot all be correct. This paper aims to discern Aquinas's true position on the matter by undertaking a detailed study of Aquinas's Treatise on Law, the broader context of the Summa Theologiae within which the Treatise is situated, and Aquinas's methodological and definitional approaches.

Islam And Religious Freedom: The Experience Of Religious Majorities And Minorities, Brett G. Scharffs

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

It seems likely that change in Islam will be affected both by outside and internal sources, as was the case for the Catholic Church and its journey to Dignitatis Humanae. However, one thing the Catholic experience suggests is that meaningful and profound change does not simply come from outside pressures; it comes from authentic and sincere evaluation and interpretation by insiders of a religious tradition of that tradition itself. Thus, if Islam is going to come to embrace religious freedom as an important value, this will be the result, significantly if not primarily, of Muslims interpreting their own sacred …

A Human Rights Code Of Conduct: Ambitious Moral Aspiration For A Public Interest Law Office Or Law Clinic, Lauren E. Bartlett

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Part I of this Article argues that the lack of moral aspiration in legal ethics rules helps contribute to unhappy and unhealthy law students and lawyers, undermining the legal profession. Part II reviews the existing rules and standards that guide the ethical behavior of lawyers in the United States, arguing that all too often the binding rules focus on providing guide posts, signaling where behavior is unacceptable and disciplinary action is possible, instead of providing moral aspiration and options or next steps to describe what a lawyer should do to deal with an ethical dilemma.

Part III of this …

Questioning Polst: Practical And Religious Issues, Lloyd Steffen

Dalhousie Law Journal

The Physician Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment (POLST) is a one-page transferrable medical chart insert designed to facilitate physician-patient communication about a patient's wishes at the end of life. The document as a chart addition is in widespread use today, but various criticisms have been leveled at POLST, the most serious being that POLST creates a slippery slope to illicit active euthanasia. This article examines the criticisms and finds that they fit two categories, the first being practical implementation problems. These problems are correctable given more and better training of medical care staff. The second and more serious ethical charge …

From Premodern Christianity To The Postmodern Jury, Ian P. Farrell

Tulsa Law Review

Reviewing: James Q. Whitman, The Origins of Reasonable Doubt: Theological Roots of the Criminal Trial (Yale University Press 2016); Dennis Hale, The Jury in America: Triumph and Decline (University Press of Kansas 2016).

An Unfinished Project: John Courtney Murray, Religious Freedom, And Unresolved Tensions In Contemporary American Society, Michael H. Diaz Phd

Loyola University Chicago Law Journal

Religious freedom has re-emerged as a controversial issue in the courts, in the Church, and in the public square in the United States. This essay examines the groundbreaking contribution that John Courtney Murray, SJ made to bring about a paradigm shift in Roman Catholic teaching on religious freedom. This shift can be traced to the Church’s transitioning from the view that “error has no rights” to only people—not ideas—have rights. The essay underscores Murray’s focus on human conscience and addresses tensions that have emerged in the United States between voices that affirm the right to religious freedom and those that …

Religious Freedom And Public Argument: John Courtney Murray On “The American Proposition”, Robin W. Lovin

Loyola University Chicago Law Journal

In his classic essays in We Hold These Truths, John Courtney Murray developed an understanding of “the American proposition” that integrated a theological account of human good with the search for public consensus in a constitutional democracy. While this understanding of the relationship between religious freedom and political life was incorporated into Catholic social teaching at the Second Vatican Council, subsequent developments in both political theory and theology call Murray’s understanding of public discourse into question. This essay examines these challenges and argues that Murray’s reconciliation of moral truth and political choice is still an important resource for discussion …

The Right To Religious Freedom—A Theological Comment, Hallie Haker Phd

Loyola University Chicago Law Journal

Religious freedom is too important a right to be politicized. Religions have an important role to play in the public sphere and are an indispensable voice in ethical conflicts of different kinds. Therefore, religions are necessarily political. But this does not mean that they should follow a political theology which claims that only those laws are valid that concord with the natural and, ultimately, divine law. I analyze the theological context of the religious freedom debate in the twentieth century, adding a theological-ethical analysis to the legal interpretations. I argue that the moral principle of dignity and the right to …

An Unfinished Project: John Courtney Murray, Religious Freedom, And Unresolved Tensions In Contemporary American Society, Miguel H. Diaz

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Religious freedom has re-emerged as a controversial issue in the courts, in the Church, and in the public square in the United States. This essay examines the groundbreaking contribution that John Courtney Murray, SJ made to bring about a paradigm shift in Roman Catholic teaching on religious freedom. This shift can be traced to the Church’s transitioning from the view that “error has no rights” to only people—not ideas—have rights. The essay underscores Murray’s focus on human conscience and addresses tensions that have emerged in the United States between voices that affirm the right to religious freedom and those that …

The Catholic Tradition On The Due Use Of Medical Remedies: The Charles Gard Case, Michael P. Moreland, John J. Paris ,Sj, Brian M. Cummings

Faculty Publications

The widely publicized British case of Charlie Gard became an international cause célèbre when the treating physicians petitioned the British courts to prevent the parents from taking their dying child to America where a physician held out promise of an unproven experimental therapy. The case became more sensationalized when the press reported that Pope Francis had intervened in the case against the position of the Vatican’s Academy for Life on the appropriate response to a patient with a lethal genetic disorder for which there was no known treatment. A review of the centuries-long teaching of Catholic moral theology on care …

Islam And Religious Freedom: The Experience Of Religious Majorities And Minorities, Brett Scharffs

Faculty Scholarship

It seems likely that change in Islam will be affected both by outside and internal sources, as was the case for the Catholic Church and its journey to Dignitatis Humanae. However, one thing the Catholic experience suggests is that meaningful and profound change does not simply come from outside pressures; it comes from authentic and sincere evaluation and interpretation by insiders of a religious tradition of that tradition itself. Thus, if Islam is going to come to embrace religious freedom as an important value, this will be the result, significantly if not primarily, of Muslims interpreting their own sacred …

The Santa Clara, 2017-11-09, Santa Clara University

The Santa Clara

No abstract provided.

There Are No Strangers Among Us: Catholic Social Teachings And U.S. Immigration Law, Terry Coonan

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

On Religious Legal Ethics, Thomas L. Shaffer

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Death Beyond A Reasonable Doubt, Janet C. Hoeffel

Arkansas Law Review

In the forty-four years since the Court employed the Eighth Amendment to temporarily suspend the death penalty in the United States in Furman v. Georgia in 1972, the Court has spilled an enormous amount of ink attempting to instruct the states on how to properly guide jurors’ discretion in imposing the death penalty. Yet, in its voluminous Eighth Amendment jurisprudence, the Justices spilled not one drop suggesting the familiar and unifying standard of beyond a reasonable doubt as a guide.

The Teleology Of Law: Responsible Citizenship And Discpleship, Robert J. Araujo, S.J.

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

The Ethical Foundations Of Judicial Decision-Making, Philip J. Grib, S.J.

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Where Morality And The Law Coincide: How Legal Obligations Of Bystanders May Be Informed By The Social Teachings Of Pope Francis, Amelia J. Uelmen

Seattle University Law Review

Since the beginning of his pontificate, Pope Francis has offered to the world powerful signs of how we should aspire to treat each other as human beings, as brothers and sisters in the one human family. He has communicated his message and his teachings in myriad ways: through symbolic gestures; his presence and words at gatherings in our world’s most troubled places; brief messages, homilies and meditations; and official documents that continue the application of the principles of Catholic social teaching to contemporary social questions. What might these prophetic signs and statements mean for the dialogue between Catholic social thought …

Withholding Or Withdrawing Artificial Nutrition And Hydration From Terminally Ill And Permanently Unconscious Patients: Some Recent Case Law And Contemporary Catholic Theology, Peter J. Ausili

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Catholicism, Ethics And Health Care Policy, Lisa Sowle Cahill

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

The Constitution And The Declaration Of Independence: Natural Law In American History, Edward J. Melvin, C.M.

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Influences Of An "Annulment Mentality", Cornelius J. Van Der Poel, C.S.Sp

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Rediscovering Realism In Ethics, Rev. Ronald D. Lawler

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.