by As we’ve all read, any number of groups, municipalities, and other entities have condemned Arizona for its attempt to curb illegal immigration, and some have urged or declared boycotts against the State. Among these righteously indignant entities are the San Diego City Council and a San Diego school district (for which Arizona’s law enforcement policies are evidently an urgent item of business). Arizonans are now, predictably and understandably, retaliating. An article in the local newspaper this morning reports that San Diego hotels and tourism-related businesses are worried because a significant number of Arizonans (who typically come here in droves to escape the Arizona summer heat) are cancelling their plans to visit.
Read the full postArchive for the 'Steven Smith' Category
In a recent NYT column, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/03/when-is-a-cross-a-cross/?emc=eta1, Stanley Fish attacks Justice Kennedy’s plurality opinion in the recent Mojave cross case as contorted and dishonest. Fish’s criticism is a familiar one, and one that is often justified, in cases in which courts uphold some monument or governmental message that has what from one perspective is plainly religious content: the national motto (“In God We Trust”), the Pledge of Allegiance (“one nation under God”), or, in this case, a cross that serves (for some) as a war memorial. Thecourts sometimes say (as under the “no endorsement” doctrine they must say if the message is to be upheld) that in context the message has somehow lost its religious meaning or content. And this rationale is in turn criticized, first for being dishonest and, second, for being irreverent or sacrilegious. That’s basically what Fish says about Justice Kennedy’s recent opinion.
Read the full postIt’s good to have friends, and especially in these troubled, culturally divided times it’s a particular blessing to have wrong-headed friends– i.e., friends whose religious and/or political views differ diametrically from one’s own. I was reminded of this blessing twice yesterday. Andy Koppelman was here in San Diego for a conference, and in the afternoon he and I went for a several hours’ walk and exchanged views on things like politics, religion, and marriage. It was a reprise of similar walks and talks we’ve had here, in Chicago, in South Bend, in Baltimore, in Princeton, and probably other places I’m not remembering at the moment. Andy and I disagree on most of these matters, and although once or twice I’ve gotten vexed at what seemed to me his wrong-headedness on some point or other, I’ve always found him to be cordial, respectful, and genuinely interested in understanding and engaging my views. I believe I’m a (slightly) better person for having had these conversations.
Read the full postToday the Supreme Court is hearing arguments in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez. The case, one of many similar cases that have arisen in universities around the country, addresses the question of whether a university, applying its nondiscrimination policies, can decline to recognize a campus religious association that limits its members or officers to students who accept that association’s beliefs and who agree to attempt to live by its moral principles (including, in some cases, refraining from extramarital sex).
Read the full postOn the Mirror of Justice blog, Michael Perry posts an essay by Michael Walzer entitled “How Passover Could Cure Us of the Tea Party.” (Perry’s own heading suggests that “Lent” might serve a similar function.) Walzer’s essay is for the most part an eloquent and edifying reflection on how Passover is a time to remember that we once were slaves in Egypt or, in more contemporary terms, that we or our ancestors were once immigrants, laborers, or factory workers. He proposes that it would be a good thing “if we gathered once every year and ceremonially remembered our working class past– the tiredness, the sweat, the bent backs, the hungry children.” That proposal is then immediately followed, without even a paragraph break, by this conclusion: “I am sure it would be harder to attend a tea party.”
Read the full postOn the blog Mirror of Justice, writing from an explicitly pro-life perspective, Greg Sisk posts “Two Cheers for Bart Stupak.” http://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2010/03/two-cheers-for-bart-stupak.html
Sisk argues that Stupak has a long history of supporting the pro-life cause, and that although he erred at the end through bad judgment and “stumbled at the finish line,” he should still be respected and embraced by the pro-life constituency. “At any dinner of pro-life leaders,” Sisk says, “I would be proud to have Rep. Stupak at my table.”
Read the full post“An unjust law is not law.” So declares a classic natural law principle. People have debated whether the principle is correct, what it entails, when it applies. The most obvious application, probably, is to laws that are unjust in their substance– laws, for example, that authorize the taking of innocent life. But might the principle also apply to laws that come into being through an unjust process?
Read the full postYesterday the Ninth Circuit, in a 2-1 decision, backed away from its controversial position of a few years ago and ruled that the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance do not violate the Establishment Clause. The majority opinion by Judge Carlos Bea is lengthy and careful– and sensible, I think, given the law that it had to work with. It doesn’t pretend that “under God” isn’t religious or has been drained of its religious content; rather, the opinion emphasizes that the dominant purpose of the Pledge is patriotic, and that is what should matter. The dissenting opinion by (surprise!) Judge Stephen Reinhardt is even longer, also very thorough, utterly self-assured, and characteristically indignant: the majority is just caving in to political pressure, Reinhardt says, and upholding an expression that is clearly unconstitutional.
Read the full post“This is a Christian nation.” Assertions like this one, referring not to any officially designated faith but to something like the nation’s ethos or political culture or theological presuppositions, were common in the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, similar claims were made (and they still are), but the “Christian” was often changed to “Judeo-Christian.” Many find all such assertions implausible or objectionable, of course. But for the sort of view that is being advanced, is “Judeo-Christian” an improvement over “Christian”?
Read the full postLaw, Religion, and Ethics? The title of this blog might seem a bit grandiose, and it also hints at subversion– at an attempt to undo centuries of effort designed to keep separate subjects that this blog evidently proposes to bring together.
A major jurisprudential effort of the last couple of centuries, often described as “positivist,” has sought to separate law from morality. That’s a simplification, of course. Legal positivists have typically not wanted to insulate law from moral evaluation, and some have argued that the very separation of law from morality can itself serve a larger “rule of law” and essentially moral purpose. (As it happens, I’m sympathetic to that argument.) But legal positivists have typically insisted that a law’s validity and, usually, its meaning are not dependent on morality. And they have often argued, as in the famous Hart-Devlin debate, that some kinds of morality are “not the business” of the law.
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