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Pluralism And Its Perils: Navigating The Tension Between Gay Rights And Religious Expression, Nan D. Hunter
Pluralism And Its Perils: Navigating The Tension Between Gay Rights And Religious Expression, Nan D. Hunter
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
The conflict between gay equality claims and religious liberty claims permeates debates over marriage equality and LGBT civil rights. Using as its centerpiece a decision that forced Georgetown University to provide benefits for a gay student organization, this article examines both the doctrinal underpinnings of how courts resolve the tension between gay rights and religion and the principles of pluralism that are at stake.
The Georgetown case is rightly understood as an exemplar of judicial minimalism. This article argues that the values of learning things undecided, while real, may be outweighed by lost opportunities for advancing principles that also foster …
The Inevitability Of Conscience: A Response To My Critics, David Luban
The Inevitability Of Conscience: A Response To My Critics, David Luban
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
This essay by Professor David Luban is written in response to critics of his book, Legal Ethics and Human Dignity.
In part I Professor Luban addresses the primacy that he assigns conscience over the professional role and focuses mainly on the arguments of his critics, Professors Norman Spaulding and W. Bradley Wendel. Part II explores the challenge of pluralism, replying primarily to Professors Katherine Kruse, Spaulding, and Wendel. Part III, in response to Professors Kruse and William Simon, elaborates on the concept of human dignity. Part IV discusses institutions and ethics, focusing on Professors Susan Carle and Simon. The …
Public Legal Reason, Lawrence B. Solum
Public Legal Reason, Lawrence B. Solum
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
This essay develops an ideal of public legal reason--a normative theory of legal reasons that is appropriate for a society characterized by religious and moral pluralism. One of the implications of this theory is that normative theorizing about public and private law should eschew reliance on the deep premises of deontology or consequentialism and should instead rely on what the author calls public values--values that can be affirmed without relying on the deep and controversial premises of particular comprehensive moral doctrines.
The ideal of public legal reason is then applied to a particular question--whether welfarism (a particular form of normative …