Law Commons^™

Against Lgbt Exceptionalism In Religious Exemptions From Antidiscrimination Obligations, Carlos A. Ball

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

In my estimation, Tebbe is correct that contested legal and policy questions arising from the intersection of religious freedom and equality principles demand difficult normative work. But, after reading the book, I am not sure he realizes the extent to which his social coherence approach is historically driven. Whether through analogies from concrete, past cases or by abstracting normative principles from past cases, Tebbe is essentially looking at how the country has, in the past, accommodated religious freedom in the pursuit of other objectives to guide us through current religious liberty controversies involving LGBT rights and reproductive freedom.

Religious Freedom In An Egalitarian Age: Rejecting Doctrinal Nihilism In The Adjudication Of Religious Claims, Laura S. Underkuffler

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

Tebbe’s argument proceeds along two separate tracks. First, he rejects the arguments of academic skeptics and others that these conflicts are by nature something that is not amenable to the judicial task. Rather, he argues, conflicts between religious freedom and civil rights can be worked through by courts, using what he calls a “social coherence” approach. This does not, of itself, “pretend to determine unique answers to pressing substantive questions”; but it establishes a way to generate reasoned conclusions that are intrinsically superior to the ad hockery or nihilistic approach that skeptics assume.

Next, Tebbe combines this approach with …

In (Partial) Praise Of (Some) Compromise: Comments On Tebbe, Chad Flanders

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

There are four very brief sections to my comment on Tebbe’s book. The first suggests some skepticism about social coherentism, and its hope to provide a neutral method for adjudicating disputes. I apply this skepticism in the second part to Tebbe’s discussion of what counts as “harm” and how to measure it. The third and fourth parts deal with my favored way of dealing with our deep disagreements and compromises when it comes to associations and employment. I should add here that nothing I say is meant to take away from Tebbe’s achievement in his book. The writing is …

Tebbe And Reflective Equilibrium, Andrew Koppelman

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

The basic method of Nelson Tebbe’s fine book, “Religious Freedom in an Egalitarian Age,” is what John Rawls called “reflective equilibrium”. Rawls famously proposed a theory of justice that aimed to be “strictly deductive.” His deductions, however, take place within a larger account of justification that he calls “reflective equilibrium,” in which we try to bring our considered moral judgments into line with our more general principles. “A conception of justice cannot be deduced from selfevident premises or conditions on principles; instead, its justification is the matter of the mutual support of many considerations, of everything fitting together into …

What Is The "Social" In "Social Coherence?" Commentary On Nelson Tebbe's Religious Freedom In An Egalitarian Age, Patricia Marino

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

It is my pleasure to comment on Nelson Tebbe’s deep and engaging book. In addition to its careful legal analysis, Religious Freedom in an Egalitarian Age bears on important philosophical issues concerning values, moral reasoning and the justification of evaluative beliefs. I find these issues especially interesting because I’ve engaged with some of them myself. Methodologically, Religious Freedom in an Egalitarian Age makes use of a concept of social coherence, and my work also considers questions of how coherence functions in evaluative contexts. What does it mean for our value judgments to fit together in an appropriate way? How …

Attempting To Engage In Socially Coherent Dialogue About Religious Liberty And Equality, Alan Brownstein

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

Most book reviews reflect the reviewer’s final conclusions about the author’s finished work. This review is more of a snapshot of the lengthy dialogue I have been engaged in for several months with Nelson Tebbe, the author of the book being reviewed. The symposium conference organized by the St. John’s Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development in September 2016, invited several church-state scholars to comment on a draft manuscript of Nelson Tebbe’s forthcoming book, Religious Freedom in an Egalitarian Age. However, the book was not fully completed when this multi-participant dialogue began.

Reply: Conscience And Equality, Nelson Tebbe

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

In this Reply, I explore some larger questions that have been prompted by the book but that fell outside its focus on the interaction between religious freedom and civil rights law. Spurred by the responses, but also independent of them, I examine the implications of my arguments for an egalitarian theory of the First Amendment. Though it is of course impossible to fully develop such a vision in this Reply, there is room to begin that work. Along the way, I answer some of the more pointed questions posed in these six responses.

Vicarious Charity: Social Responsibility And Catholic Social Teaching, Paula Dalley

Journal of Catholic Legal Studies

(Excerpt)

This Article begins with a brief introduction to the CSR debate. Part II describes the legal role of various human actors in the corporation, and Part III describes the legal restrictions on those actors’ socially responsible, but unauthorized, decisions. Part IV describes in some detail the relevant social teaching of the Catholic Church and explains that it does not apply to corporations or other corporate actors. Part V then describes the appropriate application of Catholic social doctrine to economic actors.

"There Are No Ordinary People": Christian Humanism And Christian Legal Thought, Richard W. Garnett

Journal of Catholic Legal Studies

(Excerpt)

It seems to me that what my colleague, teacher, and friend, the late Robert E. Rodes, Jr., liked to call “the legal enterprise” is the project of coordinating, structuring, facilitating, and constraining human activities in a way that promotes and secures the common good and, thereby, promotes the flourishing of human persons. This project proceeds from, and depends on, an account of what the human person is and is for—a “moral anthropology.” I have argued elsewhere, for example, that certain “truths about the nature, goods, and destiny of the human person, namely, that we were made by God—whose love …

The Pre-History Of Subsidiarity In Leo Xiii, Michael P. Moreland

Journal of Catholic Legal Studies

(Excerpt)

Part of the confusion over subsidiarity—but also, perhaps, an aspect of the principle’s richness—is its combination, then, of both “libertarian” and “communitarian” elements. Progress in our understanding and application of subsidiarity will require a careful assessment of these considerations and determining when intervention or assistance [subsidium] from a higher authority is needed and when devolution of responsibility is warranted. More precisely, we will need to determine when authority is properly located at a higher level and when authority is properly recognized in the smaller community. This conclusion, in turn, will require a discussion of subsidiarity’s political theoretical …

Watch Or Report? Livestream Or Help? Good Samaritan Laws Revisited: The Need To Create A Duty To Report, Patricia G. Montana

Faculty Publications

In July 2017, a group of five Florida teenagers taunted a drowning disabled man while filming his death on a cell phone. In the video, the teenagers laughed and shouted harsh statements like "ain’t nobody finna to help you, you dumb bitch." At the moment the man’s head sank under the water for the very last time, one of the teenagers remarked: "Oh, he just died" before laughter ensued. None of the teenagers helped the man, nor did any of them report the drowning or his death to the authorities.

Because the Good Samaritan law in Florida, like in most …