Law Commons^™

An Economic Approach To Religious Exemptions, Stephanie H. Barclay

Journal Articles

Externalities caused by religious exemptions have been getting the spotlight again in light a case the U.S. Supreme Court will hear this term: Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. Some argue that religious individuals should be required to internalize the costs they impose on third parties and thus should be denied the right to practice that harmful behavior. These new progressive theories about harm trade on rhetoric and normative intuitions regarding externalities and costs. But curiously, these theories also largely ignore an influential theoretical movement that has studied externalities and costs for the last fifty years: law and economics.

This Article …

Revisiting Mary Ann Glendon: Abortion, Divorce, Dependency, And Rights Talk In Western Law, Margaret F. Brinig, Linda C. Mcclain

Journal Articles

This essay revisits Mary Ann Glendon’s comparative law study, Abortion and Divorce in Western Law and her subsequent book, Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse. Glendon’s comparative study actually included a third topic: “forms of dependency which are connected with pregnancy, marriage, and child raising.” The topic of dependency has obvious relevance to consideration of intergenerational obligations and the interplay between family responsibility and societal responsibility for addressing dependency needs. A central claim Glendon made in both books is that the U.S. legal tradition is “libertarian,” views individuals as “lone rights bearers,” and exalts the “right to be …

Pope John Paul Ii And The Dignity Of The Human Being, John J. Coughlin

Journal Articles

Since his election in 1978 as the Successor to the Apostle Peter, His Holiness Pope John Paul II has remained one of the principal protagonists on the global stage for the dignity and value of every human being. Although the popular press and media sometimes have been slow to recognize this message, an online search of the Holy Father's copious encyclicals, addresses, and homilies reveals that he has advocated human dignity literally hundreds of times during the course of his twenty-five year pontificate. In fact, long before his election as Pope, Karol Wojtyla was developing his understanding of the dignity …