AmericanPapist Comments
"Justice Breyer has devoted his life to the public good,”
Maybe they meant "public god." (as in Abortion)
How about another petition? This one just is a punch in the gut. What are they thinking?
Souter may be sort of a schmuck, and assuredly is a lousy Justice, but his case is not the same as those of politicians. Legislators make laws; they have obligations to make those laws in accord with moral reality. Judges interpret laws written by others. Souter is wrong when he claims that the Constitution protects abortion. But his saying that a law means something that it does not is entirely different than the erroneous moral judgment of a legislator that abortion is worthy of protection by the law.
Inviting Souter to talk might not be the best idea, for lots of reasons, but it's not simply giving a platform to someone who advocates against Catholic teaching. Legal academic discussions have their own quite specific context and timbre. Non-legal professionals generally aren't invited into these discussions for exactly this reason: they don't understand the context and nature of what's going on.
Follow Up: by claiming that law schools should refuse to give justices with whom we disagree a forum in which to speak, what we're really saying is that the role of judges is simply to decide what they think best and not to interpret laws according to their written text and its meaning. This is not a good outcome for anyone and not a side of the debate we want to be on.
Justice Breyer is not being invited to speak. Rather, he is being awarded for contributions to the legal profession.
Breyer is an idiot if he thinks that the US constitution in any way protects partial birth abortion. Even if the state law had technicalities that were constitutionally problematic, the decision should have been about those technicalities, without prejudice to the main part of the law, which was to ban partial birth abortions.
Anyone who refuses to protect innocent life lacks the wisdom to lead--that is, he has no clue what the common good is--and he lacks the moral authority to judge others.
It is a travesty that Fordham could honor such a man for "contributions to the legal profession."
And it is not, Paul, that we're "claiming that law schools should refuse to give justices with whom we disagree a forum in which to speak." It is not a matter of disagreement. There is no place in which partial birth abortion can ever be justified. That man deserves no honor from a "Catholic" university that, "in the Jesuit tradition," prides itself on instilling a sense of "social justice" in its students.
SHAME on Fordham!
The Jesuits strike again!
Paul, I think you need a refresher course in the realities of modern judicial activism in a constitutional democracy.
Also, if someone wants to reduce the question here to being how one relates to justices with whom one "disagrees", well, they shouldn't don't be surprised if folks have better things to do than to get them up to speed on where the real discussion is here.
A forum in which to speak?
We're not really going to pretend that poor, oppressed Justice Breyer needs such a forum . . . are we?
The guy is a Supreme Court Justice for cryin' out loud!
He puts out hundreds of pages of written opinions each Term . . . he's written books and law review articles . . . and he's regularly invited to speak at law schools and bar association meetings.
How about a forum for the roughly one million babies who have been killed each year as a result of the monstrous decision in Roe v. Wade?
Where do they go to get their forum, eh, Dean Treanor?!
right brassband. Breyer could jot down his granny's cookie recipe, and a law review would publish it. ... needs a forum my foot. Sheesh.
My dad is a Fordham Law graduate,and he will not be pleased about this!
And here we go again with the Jesuit-bashing. *sigh*
Yeah! How dare anyone criticize Jesuits who thoroughly deserve to be criticized?
There are a lot of Jesuits doing a lot of good for a lot of people. I hate it when everyone steamrolls the entire order. It's a sweeping generalization, and it undermines the good work that so many Jesuits are doing.
There is a huge chance that the decision on the recipient of this award didn't pass the desk of a single Jesuit.
"I hate it when everyone steamrolls the entire order."
Ok, fair enough. And I hate it when when everyone steamrolls Jesuit critics just because they say something less than raving about the Jesuits' all-too-common penchant for boneheads stunts like this one.
So, SOME people criticizing SOME Jesuits who have thoroughly earned the criticism equals EVERYONE steamrolling the ENTIRE order?
I for one know several Jesuits who are pretty darn good. For the record, I didn't trash the Jesuits, I simply called them on their own stated priorities and goals.
Frankly, Stephanie, the order as a whole has lost its way. Its actions as a whole warrent careful observation and often critique. Their institues of higher education are notoriously secularized and even hostile to honest Catholicism, where good Catholic kids go only to lose their faith. I know several. If you can find a Jesuit university anywhere in the world that truly lives up to Ex Cordia Ecclesiae, indeed, that doesn't pride itself in circumventing that document, please let me know about it.
The "good" Jesuits are the exception, and were they to speak on the matter, they'd probably agree with the general critique of their order.
OK, points taken. Sorry for my own sweeping generalization.
I also know that they are really trying to reform from within, and I'm worried on their behalf that the good guys and their good deeds will be brick-walled by their own bad reputation.
Want to see some good things they are up to? How about Jesuit Refugee Services, or the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, or the Apostleship of Prayer? They offer such a rich spirituality in the Spiritual Exercises.
I have known many good, traditional Jesuits who are the reason I'm passionate about academics and about being Catholic. Please just tell me that you don't see an SJ after someone's name and have an automatic reaction of disdain.
Steph, what a great reply.
ps: I am well familiar with the apostolates you mentioned, and I personally owe more to a few Jesuits than I can ever repay, but..., well, this exchange ended rematkably well, so that's it.
Ed,
How much time do you spend every day on the internet?
Concerned, my mom used to say, "Want something done? Give it to a busy person." :)
Well, I managed not only to take a wildly unpopular position, but also to get soundly critiqued by Ed Peters AND repeatedly mistake which Supreme Court justice we were discussing. Good.
I of course don't posit that Breyer needs a forum in which to speak. Fordham students would likewise be much better served by reading The Poky Little Puppy than imbibing anything Breyer has to say. And the realities of judicial activism make my insistence that we should distinguish between judges and legislators sound idealistic, I suppose.
We could levy many of the same charges against Anthony Kennedy for his role in the 1992 Casey decision, where the Court had an opportunity to roll back Roe and instead morphed it into an amorphous monster that produced a "constitutional right" to sodomy in Lawrence.
My point was not that Breyer is a great guy, or that he should be invited anywhere, to speak or to dinner. My point was that if we accept attacking judges strictly on the basis of the outcomes of their decisions, rather than on their reasoning or jurisprudence (and there's plenty of room there for nailing Breyer), we legitimize the left's doing the same thing to Thomas, Bork, et al. Judicial gains are never going to be sustainable on the basis of that sort of jurisprudence.
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