Law Commons^™

Violence And Poltical Incivility, David Lyons

Mercer Law Review

The charge to our panel refers to "the deterioration of the political conversation," to "deep ... divisions in society," and to recent violence- especially the tragic events in Tuscon. It asks us to identify "the virtues required.for our common life as citizens in a democracy and for civil democratic conversation." I shall offer observations and conjectures on each issue, stressing the historical background.

Let me suggest, first,. that the nonconstructive and increasingly abusive character of our political discourse may be relatively mild manifestations of an even more troubling malaise of our society- commonplace unlawful violence. I wish to draw your …

Two-Way Translation: The Ethics Of Engaging With Religious Contributions In Public Deliberations, Jeremy Waldron

Mercer Law Review

Our topic for this Symposium panel is "Citizenship and Civility in a Divided Democracy: Political, Religious, and Legal Concerns." It is a topic that can be approached in the abstract or through a case study. I am going to proceed with a case study, involving the work of one of Mercer University's most distinguished scholars and public thinkers, University Professor and Professor of Christian Ethics, David Gushee. But the discussion will become abstract before very long.

I. AN EVANGELICAL DECLARATION AGAINST TORTURE

In March 2007, an organization called Evangelicals for Human Rights issued a document entitled An Evangelical Declaration Against …

Religious Reason-Giving In The Torture Debate: A Response To Jeremy Waldron, David P. Gushee

Mercer Law Review

I am grateful to the Mercer Law Review for including a Christian ethics professor in this colloquy and, wearing my other hat as a cosponsor of this symposium, grateful to our distinguished guests for being here! I am also grateful to my friend Jeremy Waldron for his very kind words about me and about our Evangelical Declaration Against Torture,' and for his excellent paper presented at this symposium, to which it is my honor to offer a brief response.

It seems to me that a paper focusing as it does on my own work on the Evangelical Declaration rightly evokes …

Democratic Citizenship And Civil Political Conversation: What's Law Got To Do With It?, Marianne Constable

Mercer Law Review

I have been asked to talk about democratic citizenship and civil conversation and what law has to do with it. I have been asked in particular: How are legal traditions and legal conversations implicated in our common life as citizens and, I presume, as residents, and in our political conversation? What can law contribute toward a restoration of the virtues required for democratic citizenship and civil conversation? At first, I thought about this second question as a question about the resources of law for repairing or mending political conversation.

Put this way though, the question is too easy to set …

Law As Language?, Steven D. Smith

Mercer Law Review

It is an honor for me to be able to participate in this Symposium with such distinguished company, and I want to thank the Mercer Law Review and the symposium organizers for inviting me. I do feel a bit awkward, though, commenting on Professor Marianne Constable's paper. As it happens, I agree with most of the sentences in the paper, taken one-by-one, but I am not sure that I catch the larger vision that the paper seeks to convey, and I am also unsure how Professor Constable's astute observations about law and language respond to the overall theme of this …