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Religion & Law

Mirror of Justice

Dedicated to the development of Catholic legal theory.

Post Frequency: 46.4/day

Last Entry: April 01, 2011 at 15:50:36

Oh Canada! ? The Culture of Death North of the Border

Posted on December 23, 2010
This story from Toronto?s National Post (here) reports a rise in the use of ?selective reduction? in Canada. ?Selective reduction? (an Orwellian euphemism if ever there was one) is of course a procedure in which one or more of the...

The Religious Left and Its Diminishing Democratic Relations

Posted on December 23, 2010
Here's what seems to me a balanced article about the waning courtship of religious liberals by the Democratic party and President Obama's administration. It will be interesting to see whether efforts pick up in advance of 2012. This is Steve...

Notes on Screwtape, Part I

Posted on December 22, 2010
This Christmas season, I wanted to patch up one of the many holes in my reading and picked up a copy of The Screwtape Letters (for New York readers, there's a theater performance of it in town that I've heard...

More Christmas Book Recommendations

Posted on December 22, 2010
My book recommendation for the year (still in time for Christmas shopping, if not for the super-saver discount for shipping by Christmas) is Gilbert Meilaender's Neither Beast Nor God: The Dignity of the Human Person. It's a truly elegant book,...

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Yoshino on SSM

Posted on December 22, 2010
Over at Slate, Kenji Yoshino continues the conversation with Robby George et al. regarding the nature of marriage. I find the exchange to be healthy and productive, not because it's reaching consensus, but because it's clearing away much of the...

Mary's "yes" at Nazareth

Posted on December 22, 2010
The family and I spent the morning at the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth. A small group of Spanish-speaking pilgrims were celebrating Mass in the Grotto, the site of Mary's "yes", when we arrived, and another group of eager,...

Matthew Franck on the "hate card"

Posted on December 21, 2010
Rob recently called our attention to an important new paper by Jeremy Waldron in which he observes that what is "infuriating" to many liberals is the determination of their opponents "to actually argue on matters that many secular liberals think...

Observation and Update from Israel

Posted on December 20, 2010
I woke up this morning, near Tel Aviv, to a view, looking west, of the Mediterranean Sea, and am now preparing for the first session of my class, "Religious Freedom in the United States of America", at the IDC-Herzliya. I...

Christianity, American Culture, and The Future of Christianity as a Minority?

Posted on December 20, 2010
Ross Douthat has a column in yesterday's New York Times, "A Tough Season for Believers," in which he offers good news and bad news for Christians in American society. You can read the whole piece here. On the sunny side,...

Viconian Echoes?

Posted on December 20, 2010
My friend and colleague Chris Borgen flagged this fascinating little project undertaken by some sanguine Harvard data jocks to uncover the human "culturome" -- the social scientific equivalent of the human genome -- by systematically analyzing the evolution of language...

Pope Benedict's address to the Roman Curia

Posted on December 20, 2010
Here is Pope Benedict's recent address to the Roman Curia. The Pope makes some interesting comments about the issue of sexual abuse and traces the crisis to the moral theories that led to such confusion and that prompted Pope John...

The statute of limitations, abuse cases, and Delaware

Posted on December 18, 2010
According to this news story, the Delaware Supreme Court is considering a case that could "sink" a number of clergy-sexual-abuse cases: In court briefs and in court, attorneys for the Oblates argued that the Legislature did not have the authority...

"Capitalism and the Welfare State"

Posted on December 18, 2010
William Van Ornum, over at America, shares this post, called "Capitalism and the Welfare State", in which he engages this interesting question, which was raised by Jim Manzi at National Review a few days ago: "How can capitalism and democracy...

additional discussion of Pope Benedict's comments on condoms

Posted on December 18, 2010
The Pope's comment on condoms continues to generate discussion. It seems to me that the discussion has moved far beyond the scope of the Pope's initial comments, which didn't seem to justify the use of condoms. The discussion has increasingly...

When is "anti-SSM" properly labeled "anti-gay?"

Posted on December 17, 2010
Here's an update on the controversy over Apple pulling a Manhattan Declaration app from its App Store. I'm more interested in MSNBC's headline for the story.

What is Marriage?

Posted on December 17, 2010
Last week Robby George, Sherif Girgis, and Ryan Anderson posted a new paper, "What is Marriage?" Kenji Yoshino responds here, calling it "the best argument against gay marriage," but ultimately rejecting it. George et al. have now replied to Yoshino.

Judicial Bias As Proxy for Substantive Critique

Posted on December 17, 2010
I have been noticing an increasingly common move in journalistic and popular accounts of judicial decision-making. A politically charged policy issues in a judicial decision either striking it down or upholding it. Because it is politically charged, the decision garners...

Slippery slopes

Posted on December 17, 2010
Reading the comments to my post on Will Saletan's distinction between SSM and incest made me wonder: are slippery slope arguments more powerful in legal reasoning than in moral reasoning? Saletan was focused on moral arguments against (adult) incest, and...

It Could Have Been Much Worse: The European Court of Human Rights and Irish Law Restricting Abortion

Posted on December 17, 2010
Yesterday the European Court of Human Rights issued its decision in A, B, and C vs. Ireland, a case in which three women challenged the Republic of Ireland?s law restricting abortion. (See here). The court ruled in favor of the...

recent developments in the Phoenix abortion case

Posted on December 17, 2010
We discussed the Phoenix abortion case in some detail back in May 2010. The recent developments are worth noting. Here and here. Bishop Olmsted has threatened to prohibit St. Joseph Hospital from calling itself a "Catholic" hospital after an abortion...

Using the name "Catholic"

Posted on December 17, 2010
Following up to Richard M's post on the use of the name "Catholic," an element of the Decree on the Laity (N. 24) may well have a significant bearing: Indeed, the lay apostolate admits of different types of relationships with...

The Tudors and Catholicism

Posted on December 16, 2010
I just finished listening in my car to this wonderful history of Henries VII and VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I (and all of the supporting cast). I recommend it -- a deeply critical portrayal of this dynasty,...

The 2011 World Day of Peace Message?Religious Freedom, the Path to Peace

Posted on December 16, 2010
This morning the Holy See released Pope Benedict?s 2011 World Day of Peace Message which develops the theme of ?Religious Freedom, the Path to Peace.? The full text in English is available here. This text should be of great interest...

Music beyond words

Posted on December 16, 2010
Thanks to Marc for suggsting the book on the Tudors. This season I am giving a few friends copies of Vladimir Jankelevitch's Music and the Ineffable, in which Jankelevitch argues that music is not a message of coded symbols and...

"The Fear of Christmas"

Posted on December 15, 2010
This essay, "On the Fear of Christmas", by Fr. James Schall, S.J., appears at The Catholic Thing and is, I think, worth a read. Here's a bit: If Christmas is just a myth, we can let it alone. But what...

Fineman on "The Vulnerable Subject and the Responsive State"

Posted on December 15, 2010
Here is a paper that will likely be of interest to MOJ readers (and Alasdair MacIntyre fans?): "The Vulnerable Subject and the Responsive State" Since there is also no U.S. constitutional guarantee to basic social goods, such as housing, education,...

Incest is cancer

Posted on December 15, 2010
If concern for the traditional family unit is not enough to justify opposition to same-sex marriage, is it enough to justify opposition to adult incest? Will Saletan makes the case for continuing the moral taboo against adult incest, even if...

Waldron quote of the day

Posted on December 15, 2010
In the paper I linked to earlier today, Jeremy Waldron challenges secularist premises regarding the nature of religious argument on controversial political issues: The secularist view seems to be that a person of faith engaged in a political debate will...

Secularism and the Limits of Community

Posted on December 14, 2010
Jeremy Waldron keeps churning out papers brimming with meaningful implications for the MoJ conversation. His latest, Secularism and the Limits of Community, looks like a must-read. The abstract: This paper addresses two issues: (1) the use of religious considerations in...

Pepperdine's dean finalists

Posted on December 14, 2010
Paul Caron reports here on the five finalists for the deanship at Pepperdine's law school. One of the listed finalists is our own Robby George. Good luck to all our friends at Pepperdine!

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