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Mayer, “The Roman Inquisition: Trying Galileo”

In April, the University of Pennsylvania Press will release “The Roman Inquisition: Trying Galileo” by Thomas F. Mayer (Augustana College). The publisher’s description follows:

Few legal events loom as large in early modern history as the trial of Galileo. Frequently cast as a heroic scientist martyred to religion or as a scapegoat of papal politics, Galileo undoubtedly stood at a watershed moment in the political maneuvering of a powerful church. But to fully understand how and why Galileo came to be condemned by the papal courts—and what role he played in his own downfall—it is necessary to examine the trial within the context of inquisitional law.

With this final installment in his magisterial trilogy on the seventeenth-century Roman Inquisition, Thomas F. Mayer has provided the first comprehensive study of the legal proceedings against Galileo. By the time of the trial, the Roman Inquisition had become an extensive corporatized body with direct authority over local courts and decades of documented jurisprudence. Drawing deeply from those legal archives as well as correspondence and other printed material, Mayer has traced the legal procedure from Galileo’s first precept in 1616 to his second trial in 1633. With an astonishing mastery of the legal underpinnings and bureaucratic workings of inquisitorial law, Mayer’s work compares the course of legal events to other possible outcomes within due process, showing where the trial departed from standard procedure as well as what available recourse Galileo had to shift the direction of the trial. The Roman Inquisition: Trying Galileo presents a detailed and corrective reconstruction of the actions both in the courtroom and behind the scenes that led to one of history’s most notorious verdicts.

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Wagschal, “Law and Legality in the Greek East: The Byzantine Canonical Tradition, 381-883”

In January, Oxford University Press will release “Law and Legality in the Greek East: The Byzantine Canonical Tradition, 381-883” by David Wagschal (University of Toronto). The publisher’s description follows:

Byzantine church law remains terra incognita to most scholars in the western academy. In this work, David Wagschal provides a fresh examination of this neglected but fascinating world. Confronting the traditional narratives of decline and primitivism that have long discouraged study of the subject, Wagschal argues that a close reading of the central monuments of Byzantine canon law c. 381-883 reveals a much more sophisticated and coherent legal culture than is generally assumed. Engaging in innovative examinations of the physical shape and growth of the canonical corpus, the content of the canonical prologues, the discursive strategies of the canons, and the nature of the earliest forays into systematization, Wagschal invites his readers to reassess their own legal-cultural assumptions as he advances an innovative methodology for understanding this ancient law. Law and Legality in the Greek East explores topics such as compilation, jurisprudence, professionalization, definitions of law, the language of the canons, and the relationship between the civil and ecclesiastical laws. It challenges conventional assumptions about Byzantine law while suggesting many new avenues of research in both late antique and early medieval law, secular and ecclesiastical.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Piatt, “Catholic Legal Perspectives”

Robert William Piatt, Jr. (St. Mary’s) has published Catholic Legal Perspectives (Carolina Academic Press 2012), designed for classes on jurisprudence and Catholic legal theory. The publisher’s description follows.

This book examines our system of justice by identifying, in several critical areas, how Catholic principles and legal principles overlap and diverge. While it is not expected or required that the reader agree, in every instance, with either the law or the Catholic perspectives, the reader of this work will come away with an understanding of both. Critiques and responses are included throughout. Topics include family issues (marriage, same sex marriage, divorce, and annulment), immigration, public assistance, and matters of life and death (including abortion, euthanasia, and the death penalty).

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Hiers on Biblical Contract and Tort Jurisprudence.

Richard Hiers (University of Florida) has posted Ancient Laws, Yet Strangely Modern: Biblical Contract and Tort Jurisprudence. The abstract follows.

People generally, and even most biblical scholars, tend to view biblical law as, at best, a random patchwork of odd and antiquated commandments and rules.  The present Article demonstrates that many biblical laws can be understood to have functioned in biblical time, in ways remarkably similar to various laws characterized in modern AngloAmerican jurisprudence as contract and tort law.  In particular, the Article points out that the biblical tort laws found in Exodus 21:18 through 22:17 are structured along lines closely parallel to concepts found in modern tort law jurisprudence.  Many of the  biblical laws considered here give expression to the underlying values of concern for the worth and well being of both individuals and the community.  The findings here should be of interest to both legal and biblical scholars.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Coughlin, “Law, Person, and Community”

Another wonderful looking book for those interested in jurisprudence and comparative canon law studies by Fr. John Coughlin (Notre Dame), Law, Person, and Community: Philosophical, Theological, and Comparative Perspectives on Canon Law (OUP 2012).  For Coughlin’s other recent book about canon law, see here.  The publisher’s description follows.

Law, Person, and Community: Philosophical, Theological, and Comparative Perspectives on Canon Law takes up the fundamental question “What is law?” through a consideration of the interrelation of the concepts of law, person, and community. As with the concept of law described by secular legal theorists, canon law aims to set a societal order that harmonizes the interests of individuals and communities, secures peace, guarantees freedom, and establishes justice. At the same time, canon law rests upon a traditional understanding of the spiritual end of the human person and religious nature of community.

The comparison of one of the world’s ancient systems of religious law with contemporary conceptions of law rooted in secular theory raises questions about the law’s power to bind individuals and communities. Professor John J. Coughlin employs comparative methodology in an attempt to reveal the differing concepts of the human person reflected in both canon law and secular legal theory. Contrasting the contemporary positivistic view of law with the classical view reflected in canon law, Law, Person, and Community discusses the relationship between canon law, theology, and natural law. It also probes the interplay between the metaphysical and historical in the theory of law by an examination of canonical equity, papal authority, and the canon law of marriage. It juxtaposes the assumptions of canon law about church-state relations with those of the modern liberal state as exemplified by U.S. first amendment jurisprudence. No scholarly work has yet addressed this question of how the principles and substance of canon law, both past and present, relate to current issues in legal theory, such as the foundation of human rights and in particular the right of religious freedom for individuals and communities.  

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Dagan and Fisher on Commodification

It doesn’t address religion as such, but a new piece on SSRN, The State and the Market–A Parable: On the State’s Commodifying Effects, raises issues that law and religion scholars may find interesting. Over the last generation, more and more aspects of life have become matters of the market. People can make contracts about lots of things that once were off limits. Some scholars argue that this trend has gone too far, that certain subjects, like family relationships, relate so closely to human personality that their commodifcation does violence to something essential. The authors of this new piece, Tsilly Dagan (Bar-Ilan) and Talia Fisher (Tel Aviv) are skeptical of the anti-commodification position, arguing that state regulation may have commodifying effects as well. Their paper is entirely secular, but religious jurisprudence traditionally opposes commodification as well, and scholars who work in that field may find the discussion of commodification suggestive. The abstract follows.

Commodification has become the central parameter in delineating the contours of the market and in the division of labor between the market and the state. The commodification critique has become a ‘buzz word’ against the market and thus in support of State intervention. In what has been termed “taboo trades” – human organs, reproductive capacities, sexuality and the like – market-based orders have been condemned on the basis of commodification, thus leaving the floor open for state-intervention by regulation. The central argument of this article is that the commodificatory effects, often associated with monetary transactions, are not exclusive to monetized exchanges nor to the market arena. Rather, State intervention, as such, involves similar reductive effects, in light of its inherent itemizing, categorizing and ranking nature. This understanding has a significant implication for the structuring of the market-state debate: In light of the fact that upon closer scrutiny state ordering shares similar commodificatory effects with the market – we argue that it is not enough to raise the commodification banner in order to justify state intervention. Put differently, an implicit premise in the prevailing commodification discourse is that where the market commodifies, the state is necessarily neutral. However, state intervention – we will show – suffers from similar flaws. Another purpose of viewing commodification through the prism of State intervention is to expose the multi-faceted nature of the anti-commodificatory sentiment. Expanding the horizons of the commodification discourse beyond the traditional contexts of taboo markets to the unexplored terrain of state regulation exposes the fact that money is but one instance of a whole family of cases where thick social interactions are translated into a uni-dimensional currency that has a reductive effect on them.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Conference on Christian Legal Thought (Jan. 7)

The Lumen Christi Institute will host the annual Conference on Christian Legal Thought on January 7 in Washington. Panels include “Public Unions and the State of Organized Labor,” “Pedagogy,” “Law, Speech, and Morality,” and “The Vocation of the Christian Lawyer and the Future of Legal Education.” Speakers include St. John’s own David Gregory. Details are here.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

New Translation of Vidyasagar’s “Hindu Widow Marriage”

Brian A. Hatcher (Tufts) has published a new translation of Vidyasagar’s Hindu Widow Marriage (Columbia University Press 2011), a nineteenth-century work arguing for the repeal of Hindu restrictions on widows’ remarriage. The publisher’s description follows.

Before the passage of the Hindu Widow’s Re-marriage Act of 1856, Hindu tradition required a woman to live as a virtual outcast after her husband’s death. Widows were expected to shave their heads, discard their jewelry, live in seclusion, and undergo regular acts of penance. Ishvarchandra Vidyasagar was the first Indian intellectual to successfully argue against these strictures. A Sanskrit scholar and passionate social reformer, Vidyasagar was a leading proponent of widow marriage in colonial India, urging his contemporaries to reject a ban that caused countless women to suffer needlessly.

Vidyasagar’s brilliant strategy paired a rereading of Hindu scripture with an emotional plea on behalf of the widow, resulting in an organic reimagining of Hindu law and custom. Vidyasagar made his case through the two-part publication Hindu Widow Marriage, a tour de force of logic, erudition, and Read more

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More on Lund and Anti-Catholicism Redux

As my colleague, Andrew Hamilton notes below, Christopher C. Lund of Wayne State University School of Law will soon publish The New Victims of the Old Anti-Catholicism in the Connecticut Law Review.  Having read Prof. Lund’s paper, I would like to complement Andrew’s post by detailing Lund’s claims.

Lund links the attitude underlying 21st-century, religious-freedom jurisprudence with the both popular and legal anti-Catholic prejudice that pervaded the United States in the 19th-century—yet he does so without examining any recent case brought by a Catholic.

Nevertheless, in the four cases Lund examines, the plaintiffs’ status as members of a religious minority—or an a-religious one—and their struggle for legal recognition bridge this apparent divide.  In other words, like 19th-century Catholics, all of the cases involve plaintiffs in a religious minority seeking recognition of their beliefs and practices as legal rights under the Free Exercise and Establishment clauses.  Thus, Lund connects a present-day American Wiccan, Muslim, Evangelical Protestant, and Atheist to Catholics in America one-hundred-fifty-years ago.  More poignantly, in each contemporary case the plaintiff lost—outcomes that erode the idealistic notion that American legal and popular tolerance of minority religions expands with time.

For a description of each of the four cases Lund examines—and their significance—please follow the jump. Read more