Digital Commons Network^™

Development Of Catholic Moral Doctrine: Probing The Subtext, M. Cathleen Kaveny

Journal Articles

A discussion on the contribution of Judge John T. Noonan’s works on moral doctrine to the study of Catholic moral theology. Professor Kaveny argues that Noonan’s writings have aided the development of Catholic moral doctrine by examining its rich living history and tradition. She notes that Noonan views the subject as a social historian who is interested in how Catholics have interpreted moral theology over time, tracing continuities and changes in their positions, and as a lawyer who is interested in learning how they have tried to find a balance between human dignity and the common good. Professor Kaveny addresses …

Cultural Change And "Catholic Lawyers", Stephen F. Smith

Journal Articles

If there is anything that America definitely does not need, it would seem, it is more lawyers. Over the last thirty years or so, the number of lawyers practicing in the United States has almost tripled to current levels of roughly 900,000 practicing attorneys. To this number, our nation's law schools add another 35,000 attorneys annually. In spite of this, the purpose of this special inaugural law review issue is to commemorate the founding of a new school, the Ave Maria School of Law. It is an honor for me to be able to share in the joy and pride …

Atticus, Thomas, And The Meaning Of Justice, Teresa Godwin Phelps

Notre Dame Law Review

No abstract provided.

Select Bibliography Of Works By Thomas L. Shaffer, Notre Dame Law Review

Notre Dame Law Review

No abstract provided.

Jews, Christians, Lawyers, And Money, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

Years ago, when I was the resident guru in legal ethics at Washington and Lee University, in the little mountain town of Lexington, Virginia, a reporter from the daily newspaper in Roanoke asked me to identify the most serious ethical issue for American lawyers. My answer: "Money."

Part of that answer reflected the fact that American lawyers make about twice as much money as lawyers in other "developed" countries. And American lawyers make, on the average, fifty percent more than average Americans do. (Reference to averages and means here do not reflect how steep the incline is from the middle …

The Mandatum, Again, Gerard V. Bradley

Journal Articles

President's Page

Bradley writes about the mandatum requirement of Canon 812, which Ex Corde Ecclesia presents as central to the Catholicity of college or university.

Kelsen And Aquinas On The Natural-Law Doctrine, Robert P. George

Notre Dame Law Review

No abstract provided.

On The Dividing Line Between Natural Law Theory And Legal Positivism, Brian Bix

Notre Dame Law Review

No abstract provided.

Natural Law, Marriage, And The Thought Of Karol Wojtyla, John J. Coughlin

Journal Articles

This Article examines the loss of the natural law perspective from legal theory and the movement towards liberal theory. The Article continues by analyzing two features of the natural law tradition as described in the philosophical writings of Karol Wojtyla. The first feature concerns marriage and family as the fundamental human community. The second considers marriage as a virtuous relationship. The Article concludes with practical suggestions for the legal profession and legal education with regard to counseling clients about marriage.

Love, Human Dignity, And Justice: Some Legacies From Protestant And Catholic Ethics, Harlan R. Beckley

Notre Dame Law Review

No abstract provided.

154th University Of Notre Dame Commencement And Mass Program, University Of Notre Dame

Commencement Programs

154th University of Notre Dame Commencement and Mass Program including Law School awards

Tribute To The Honorable Richard Sheppard Arnold For His Service As Chief Judge Of The United States Court Of Appeals For The Eighth Circuit, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

The Honorable Richard S. Arnold was appointed by President Carter in October 1978 to the District Bench for the Eastern and Western Districts of Arkansas and elevated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in 1980, where he serves with his brother, the Honorable Morris S. Arnold. Judge Richard Arnold served as Chief Judge of the Eighth Circuit from January 8, 1992 to April 17, 1998. A graduate of Yale College and Harvard Law School, Judge Arnold clerked for Justice William Brennan of the United States Supreme Court from 1960-1961. He was an associate at Covington …

Thinking Morally, Gerard V. Bradley

Journal Articles

The Way of the Lord Jesus, Vol. 3: Difficult Moral Questions. By Germain Grisez. Franciscan Press (217-228-5670). 927 pages. $35.

Here is a uniquely valuable work, practical and direct, written in plain English by a mature scholar who wears his immense learning lightly. The "difficult moral questions" it treats are two hundred in number, each with an Analysis and a Reply. (And there are two narrative Appendices.)

Catholic Judges In Capital Cases, Amy Coney Barrett, John H. Garvey

Journal Articles

The Catholic Church's opposition to the death penalty places Catholic judges in a moral and legal bind. While these judges are obliged by oath, professional commitment, and the demands of citizenship to enforce the death penalty, they are also obliged to adhere to their church's teaching on moral matters. Although the legal system has a solution for this dilemma by allowing the recusal of judges whose convictions keep them from doing their job, Catholic judges will want to sit whenever possible without acting immorally. However, litigants and the general public are entitled to impartial justice, which may be something a …

Notre Dame Lawyer - Fall/Winter 1996, Notre Dame Law School

Notre Dame Lawyer

Oh! To Be in England ...

Living and Learning Law in London

Law Can't Do Morality's Job

Keeping the Faith

Faculty Profile: John Mitchell Finnis

After Hours
Dean David T. Link and Habitat for Humanity

Alumni Profiles
Patrick McCartan and Scott Medlock

Student Profiles
The Road Less Travelled

The Kresge Law Library-Progress and Challenges

John Courtney Murray And The Dilemma Of Religious Toleration, Gerard V. Bradley

Journal Articles

John Courtney Murray and the Dilemma of Religious Toleration. By Keith J. Pavlischek. Thomas Jefferson University Press. 290 pages. $22.50.

Keith Pavlischek's valuable book advances the Murray discussion right where Murray's writings most repay careful reading: religious liberty. Pavlischek, an evangelical Protestant, analyzes Murray's published and unpublished writings on religious liberty, and examines his role in the drafting and revision of Vatican II's Dignitatis Humanae. Pavlischek notes that Murray was not entirely pleased with DH. But Pavlischek's is the best discussion of just how the moral-theological defense of religious freedom advanced by the French prevailed over Murray's view …

Human Nature And Moral Responsibility In Lawyer-Client Relationships, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

My interest here is ethics—whether observation, intuition, the ability to make appeals to human nature, and insight into the workings of the human heart are useful as guides for legal judgments in relationships between lawyers and clients. A modern American lawyer and her client use power as certainly as Solomon used power and, I suppose, are as manifestly subject to indirection in deciding how to use power as the kings of Israel were. In both cases the enterprise is undertaken, as W.H. Auden put it, on "a moral planet tamed by terror."

Listening For The Future In The Voices Of The Past: John T. Noonan, Jr. On Love And Power In Human History, M. Cathleen Kaveny

Journal Articles

A discussion of works on moral theology and canon law by Judge John T. Noonan Jr. (1926-2017) from the 1950s to the 1980s, which deal with the subjects of usury, contraception, marriage, slavery, bribery and religious liberty. Its focus is on Noonan’s normative commitments regarding epistemology, theological anthropology and the relation of love, justice and law. The article argues that Noonan was influenced by three core ideas, an epistemological view that moral knowledge is sought after and articulated in particular times and places, an anthropological view that argues the study of ethics, law, and theology must sensitively discern the core …

Law, Morality, And "Sexual Orientation", John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

During the past thirty years there has emerged in Europe a standard form of legal regulation of sexual conduct. This standard form or scheme, which I shall call the "standard modem [European] position," is accepted by the European Court of Human Rights and the European Commission of Human Rights (the two supra-national judicial and quasijudicial institutions of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1950), to which almost all European states are party, whether or not they are also party to the European [Economic] Community now known as the European Union). The standard modem European …

On Religious Legal Ethics, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

Perhaps as a result of the new and populous generation of lawyers, or as a holdover from the anti-war generation of law students, or maybe even as fall-out from Watergate, legal ethics has become a serious discipline.

The New Natural Law Theory: A Reply To Jean Porter, Gerard V. Bradley, Robert George

Journal Articles

The theory of practical reasoning and morality proposed by Germain Grisez, and developed by him in frequent collaboration with John Finnis and Joseph Boyle, is the most formidable presentation of natural law theory in this century. Although work by Finnis and others has brought this "new natural law theory" (NNLT) to the attention of secular philosophers, the theory is of particular interest to Catholic moralists. This is because NNLT provides resources for a fresh defense of traditional moral norms, including those forbidding abortion, euthanasia, and other forms of "direct" killing, as well as sexual immoralities such as fornication, sodomy, and …

Ndls Update 08/1992, Notre Dame Law School

NDLS Update

No abstract provided.

Lawyers And Liberations, Robert E. Rodes

Journal Articles

The Jesuit educational tradition stresses the importance of service to the community and especially to its underprivileged members. Much of the discussion at the Ignatian Year celebration held at St. Louis University centered on the role of the law school in the Jesuit educational tradition. However, I would like to propose that this discussion take on a much larger focus.

The ideas of community service, solidarity with the poor and professionalism within an ethical context, although integral to the Jesuit tradition, are relevant to society as a whole. Furthermore, integration of these concepts into law school education is merely a …

Inaugural Howard Lichtenstein Lecture In Legal Ethics: Lawyer Professionalism As A Moral Argument, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

The recurrent movement to call or recall lawyers to professionalism is a moral argument. It is an argument made to individual lawyers, a claim among lawyers, that professionalism has to do with being a good person.

I see two aspects to the claim that professionalism is a moral value: one aspect says to a person "be professional." It is an admonition to virtue. The other aspect says to a person, "be in the profession—be of it," with an appeal that seems familiar from other admonitions we have heard to align ourselves with groups that are supposed to make us better …

Legal Ethics After Babel, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

Legal ethics owes as much to Richard M. Nixon as it does to philosophy. The rebirth of legal ethics in the last decade is one of many consequences, although possibly the most obscure, of the burglary at the Watergate Hotel in 1972. The criminal politics that destroyed Mr. Nixon's presidency summoned American lawyers to a serious, systematic examination of the morals of their craft.

Narrative In The Moral Theology Of Tom Shaffer, John D. Ayer

1971–1975: Thomas L. Shaffer

Essay Review

Thomas L. Shaffer, American Legal Ethics: Text, Readings, and Discussion Topics. New York: Matthew Bender, 1985. Pp. xxix + 645 + 92 apps. $32.50.

-----------, Faith and the Professions. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1987. Pp. ix + 337. $29.50.

I. Character Ethics

II. Shaffer's Project

III. Storytelling

IV. Community

V. Grades

Less Suffering When You're Warned: A Response To Professor Lewis, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

Professor Lewis' comment is a lucid brief for warning clients that their lawyers have moral limits. It begins with a generous description of the discussion Professor Freedman and I had on the subject of moral limits. I am able, as a result, to summarize the exchanges quickly: Professor Freedman's original proposition, in these pages, was that once the lawyer-client relationship is in place, it is immoral for the lawyer to refuse to seek the client's legal objectives; it is immoral for the lawyer to invoke her own conscience to prevent the client from obtaining what the law allows the client …

Character And Community: Rispetto As A Virtue In The Tradition Of Italian-American Lawyers, Thomas L. Shaffer, Mary M. Shaffer

Journal Articles

Our project is to contemplate a discrete piece of applied ethics in the American legal profession, a piece of what one might call Italian-American legal ethics. We propose to describe a moral value for which we will use the Italian word rispetto. Our understanding of rispetto is that it is a virtue, a good habit, through which the person learns, practices, teaches, and remembers his place within the family. We will argue here that the practice of this virtue will allow a modern lawyer to be in and of his or her civic and professional community without loss of dignity …

Unique, Novel, And Unsound Adversary Ethic, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

The dominant ethic in the American legal profession in 1988 is the adversary ethic. The adversary ethic, in the words of the late Justice Abe Fortas, claims that "[l]awyers are agents, not principals; and they should neither criticize nor tolerate criticism based upon the character of the client whom they represent or the cause that they prosecute or defend. They cannot and should not accept responsibility for the client's practices." This ethic is the principal—and often the only—reference point in professional discussions. Although it is embedded in our professional codes, our cases, and our law offices, this Article argues that …

The Legal Ethics Of Belonging, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

Socrates went around Athens telling law teachers and law students that their highest concern should be to be good people. And, he said, the next and consequent concern of the profession should be to show the citizens of Athens how to be good people. For Socrates, as for virtually all of classical moral philosophy and much of Jewish and Christian moral theology, ethical discussion is discussion about the good person. When we talk about Aristotle's man of practical wisdom, or when we talk about heroes, saints, role models, paragons, or professional examplars, it is the good person we are talking …