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Against Sovereignty: A Cautionary Note On The Normative Power Of The Actual, Patrick Mckinley Brennan
Against Sovereignty: A Cautionary Note On The Normative Power Of The Actual, Patrick Mckinley Brennan
Patrick McKinley Brennan
Drawing on classical and contemporary jurisprudence and political philosophy, this Essay argues that the Roberts Court should seize the next apt moment to abandon the doctrines of “sovereignty” and “sovereign dignity” that the Rehnquist Court developed over the decade that began with the 1996 decision in the Seminole case. Although pursued in service of the laudable goal of “our federalism,” these doctrines work a corruption of our legal, political, and moral self-understanding. As they do so, they distract the Court and the citizenry from the disciplined commitment to the rule of law and legal justice by which a body politic …
Harmonizing Plural Societies: The Case Of Lasallians, Families, Schools – And The Poor, Patrick Mckinley Brennan
Harmonizing Plural Societies: The Case Of Lasallians, Families, Schools – And The Poor, Patrick Mckinley Brennan
Patrick McKinley Brennan
The modern state characteristically assumes or asserts a monopoly over “group persons” and their right to exist; group persons are said to exist at the pleasure or concession of the state. According to Catholic social teaching, by contrast, these unities of order -- such as church and family, as well as corporations and schools and the like -- are, at least in potency, ontologically prior to the state. Such group persons both constitute conditions of the possibility of human flourishing and, correlatively, impose limitations on the “sovereign” state. Such group persons are not mere concessions of an unbounded state: They …