Posted on by Mark Movsesian

A New Book on the Founding of Israel

According to observers who know much more about the situation than I, the debate over judicial reform in Israel suggests a profound struggle over the country’s basic character as a Jewish and democratic state. Israel’s founders thought they could have it both ways–that a political religious identity could exist together with secular pluralism in a creative tension. The events of this summer show that the balance is becoming harder. A new book from Cambridge University Press, Israel’s Declaration of Independence: The History and Political Theory of the Nation’s Founding Moment, discusses the perhaps unsustainable vision of the people who founded the Jewish State. The authors are Neil Rogachevsky (Yeshiva University) and Don Zigler. Here is the publisher’s description:

Israel’s Declaration of Independence brings to life the debates and decisions at the founding of the state of Israel. Through a presentation of the drafts of Israel’s Declaration of Independence in English for the first time, Neil Rogachevsky and Dov Zigler shed new light on the dilemmas of politics, diplomacy, and values faced by Israel’s leaders as they charted the path to independence and composed what became modern Israel’s most important political text. The stakes began with war, state-building, strategy, and great power politics, and ascended to matters of high principle: freedom, liberty, sovereignty, rights, and religion. Using fast-paced narration of the meetings of Israel’s leadership in April and May 1948, this volume tells the astonishing story of the drafting of Israel’s Declaration of Independence, enriching and reframing the understanding of Israel’s founding and its ideas – and tracing its legacy.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

New New Natural Law

The “new natural law” (or NNL) is a school of natural law thought, arising in the mid-1960s in the work of Germain Grisez and thereafter, which aimed to revive and revise Thomistic thought for the contemporary period. Its greatest expositor is John Finnis, whose “Natural Law and Natural Rights” is one of the most important works in the philosophy of law of the 20th century, but it has many other major scholarly defenders as well as challengers (for example, Ralph McInerny and Russell Hittinger). It’s too difficult to get into much of the substance of new natural law theory in a post like this, but suffice it to say that one of the basic tenets of the new natural law theory concerns the question how we come to know what it is good to do and to act to achieve those ends. NNL theorists generally believe that a person’s practical reason (reason oriented toward action) “naturally” has access to or understands as self-evidently desirable a number of basic human goods. For NNL theorists, these goods include life, knowledge, friendship, and several others. Moral reflection and decision is needed, on the NNL account, because in any given situation, actions needed to achieve one of these goods may render the achievement of other goods difficult or even impossible. Note that the role of divine illumination for NNL is robustly debated from those within the natural law tradition.

As I say, there is a great deal more to NNL theory than just this, and interested readers should go to the main sources, especially Professor Finnis’ work. But here is a new book coming out this fall that is very likely to intervene in the arguments about NNL theory and perhaps amend or update them, and that looks well worth checking out: Natural Law and Modern Society (Oxford University Press) by Sean Coyle.

Modern society is riven by social divisions: between conservatives and progressives; liberals and socialists; the mainstream and the rise of far-right political groups etc. Instead of truth, there are ‘post-truth’ and ‘alternative facts’. In the wake of problems caused by untruthful politicians and world leaders, by Brexit and Covid, the need to repair or rebuild our communities has become paramount, but what kind of community should we build, and on what foundations? This book suggests that natural law is such a foundation.

Natural Law and Modern Society presents a new theory of natural law, grounded in the thought of Saint Thomas Aquinas, aimed at answering questions relevant to the world of today: from the nature of morality and ethics to the theory of law, obligation and political authority; from the domestic realm to international community. It seeks to elicit from the natural law tradition timeless truths concerning the human condition, in particular the social and political dimensions to human existence. This mode of existence, it argues, is not a problem to be resolved through some permutation of political institutions, but a predicament to be managed. At the heart of the book is the identification of a ‘core morality’: a set of moral requirements that are foundational to every society at all places and times, as distinct from those standards that are particular to this or that society at some time.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

A New Collection of Essays on COVID and Religious Communities

A number of us in law-and-religion have written on what the courts’ (and the Court’s) response to COVID reveals about American church-state law, and free exercise law in particular. Here is a new collection of essays from Temple University Press on what COVID reveals about the politics and sociology of religion in the United States: An Epidemic among My People: Religion, Politics, and COVID-19 in the United States. The editors are Paul A. Djupe (Denison University) and Amanda Frieden (University of Western Ontario). Here’s the publisher’s description:

The pandemic presented religion as a paradox: faith is often crucial for helping people weather life’s troubles and make difficult decisions, but how can religion continue to deliver these benefits and provide societal structure without social contact? The topical volume, An Epidemic among My People, explains how the COVID-19 pandemic stress tested American religious communities and created a new politics of religion centered on public health. 

The editors and contributors consider how the virus and government policy affected religion in America. Chapters examine the link between the prosperity gospel and conspiracy theories, the increased purchase of firearms by evangelicals, the politics of challenging public health orders as religious freedom claims, and the reactions of Christian nationalists, racial groups, and female clergy to the pandemic (and pandemic politics). As sharp lines were drawn between people and their governments during this uncertain time, An Epidemic among My People provides a comprehensive portrait of religion in American public life.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian · 1 Comment

Classical and Christian Influences on the Founding

The American conception of religious freedom has been influenced strongly by both Enlightenment and Evangelical Christian ideas from the beginning. One need think only of Madison’s famous Memorial and Remonstrance, which skillfully weaves together arguments in both strains. It’s fair to say that conventional scholarship sometimes ignores the role that Christian ideas played in the founding, however. A new book from Cambridge, The Classical and Christian Origins of American Politics, seeks to remedy that. The authors are scholars Kody Cooper (University of Tennessee-Chattanooga) and Justin Buckley Dyer (University of Texas-Austin). Here is the publisher’s description:

There has been a considerable amount of literature in the last 70 years claiming that the American founders were steeped in modern thought. This study runs counter to that tradition, arguing that the founders of America were deeply indebted to the classical Christian natural-law tradition for their fundamental theological, moral, and political outlook. Evidence for this thesis is found in case studies of such leading American founders as Thomas Jefferson and James Wilson, the pamphlet debates, the founders’ invocation of providence during the revolution, and their understanding of popular sovereignty. The authors go on to reflect on how the founders’ political thought contained within it the resources that undermined, in principle, the institution of slavery, and explores the relevance of the founders’ political theology for contemporary politics. This timely, important book makes a significant contribution to the scholarly debate over whether the American founding is compatible with traditional Christianity.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian · 2 Comments

A New Collection of Essays on Character and the University

A couple of months ago, Marc and I recorded a Legal Spirits episode in which we disagreed a bit about our role as law professors. I think it’s fair to say that Marc believes more than I do that law professors have an obligation to inculcate moral virtues in our students–or at least address moral virtues in our teaching expressly, as occasion allows. By contrast, although I don’t think we should be blind to moral concerns, I view my role in the classroom more as teaching a professional skill. Moral critique is incidental; for character formation, my students will mostly have to look elsewhere (which is no doubt a good thing!). Marc and I each have our reasons, which we explain in the podcast, and anyway we differ only in degree.

A new collection of essays from Pepperdine University Press on the work of the late James Q. Wilson, Character and the Future of the American University, addresses the issue of character formation and university teaching. The editor is scholar James R. Wilburn (also of Pepperdine). Here is the description from the publisher’s website:

One of the most influential social scientists of the past century, James Q. Wilson was best known for his “broken windows” theory of crime. But Wilson considered the study of moral character to be his true life’s work. In Character and the Future of the American University, thirteen eminent thinkers examine the growing significance of Wilson’s seminal work, The Moral Sense, through lenses ranging from political science and public policy to the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences.

Wilson believed that human beings’ innate moral sense holds profound promise for dispelling the darkness that threatens our democracy. Including essays by Wilson, his colleagues, and other distinguished scholars, this book expands on that idea, exploring how reintegrating discussions of morality and character into university curricula could help shape the next generation.

Today, America’s universities face historic challenges and critical decisions. The development of tomorrow’s public leadership—and the very survival of a free society—are at stake. Can a renewed emphasis on character offer the solution? More timely today than ever, Wilson’s thought-provoking message will challenge and inspire readers both inside and outside academia.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

The Empyrean and the Celestial Rose

This spring, the Italian American Law Society at St. John’s Law School hosted a wonderful event led by some knowledgeable law students discussing Dante’s Divine Comedy, focusing in particular on Canto VI of Purgatorio and the politics of Florence and Italy at the time Dante wrote. The law and religion features of the Divine Comedy really might merit an entire course. Here is an interesting new book that features another important and sometimes neglected element of the masterwork: its theological framework and content. The book is Dante the Theologian (Cambridge University Press) by Denys Turner.

An understanding of Dante the theologian as distinct from Dante the poet has been neglected in an appreciation of Dante’s work as a whole. That is the starting-point of this vital new book. In giving theology fresh centrality, the author argues that theologians themselves should find, when they turn to Dante Alighieri, a compelling resource: whether they do so as historians of fourteenth-century Christian thought, or as interpreters of the religious issues of our own times. Expertly guiding his readers through the structure and content of the Commedia, Denys Turner reveals – in pacy and muscular prose – how Dante’s aim for his masterpiece is to effect what it signifies. It is this quasi-sacramental character that renders it above all a theological treatise: whose meaning is intelligible only through poetry. Turner’s Dante ‘knows that both poetry and theology are necessary to the essential task and that each without the other is deficient.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Religion of Delight

The rise of the Nones is one of the most discussed features of contemporary American religion. Most Nones are not atheists or agnostics. Rather, they are unaffiliated believers who follow their own spiritual paths. Often, those paths involve a kind of pantheism. Although mass-market pantheism is definitely of our own time, an elite pantheism has been part of American religious culture since at least the Transcendentalists. A new book from the University of Chicago Press, The Delight Makers: Anglo-American Metaphysical Religion and the Pursuit of Happiness, by scholar Catherine Albanese (UC-Santa Barbara) explores the phenomenon. Here’s the description from the publisher’s website:

An ambitious history of desire in Anglo-American religion across three centuries.

The pursuit of happiness weaves disparate strands of Anglo-American religious history together. In The Delight Makers, Catherine L. Albanese unravels a theology of desire tying Jonathan Edwards to Ralph Waldo Emerson to the religiously unaffiliated today. As others emphasize redemptive suffering, this tradition stresses the “metaphysical” connection between natural beauty and spiritual fulfillment. In the earth’s abundance, these thinkers see an expansive God intent on fulfilling human desire through prosperity, health, and sexual freedom. Through careful readings of Cotton Mather, Andrew Jackson Davis, William James, Esther Hicks, and more, Albanese reveals how a theology of delight evolved alongside political overtures to natural law and individual liberty in the United States.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Religious Liberty in a Polarized Age

Our friend Tom Berg, a professor at the University of St. Thomas Law School–Minnesota and a participant in the Center’s Tradition Project and other programs, is one of the country’s best known scholars of church and state. Next month, he comes out with a new book on the subject from Eerdman’s, Religious Liberty in a Polarized Age, arguing against a selective approach to religious freedom–“yes” for my allies, “no” for my opponents–and for a balanced commitment to religious freedom in the interests of social harmony. Anything Tom writes is worth reading and this looks like a very interesting book, indeed. Here’s the description from the Eerdman’s site:

As our political and social landscapes polarize along party lines, religious liberty faces threats from both sides. From antidiscrimination commissions targeting conservative Christians to travel bans punishing Muslims, recent litigation has revealed the selective approach both left and right take when it comes to freedom of religion. But what if religious liberty is part of the cure for our political division? 
  
Drawing on constitutional law, history, and sociology, Thomas C. Berg shows us how reaffirming religious freedom cultivates the good of individuals and society. After explaining the features of polarization and the societal benefits of diverse religious practices, Berg offers practical counsel on balancing religious freedom against other essential values. 
  
Protecting Americans’ ability to live according to their beliefs undergirds a healthy, pluralistic society—and this protection must extend to everyone, not just political allies. Lay readers and legal scholars who are weary of partisan quarreling will find Berg’s case timely and compelling.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

A New Kind of Schooling

It is hard to overstate the changes that are coming to K-12 education in America. States are increasingly electing funding schemes in which the money follows students rather than systems–a new approach that goes by the moniker, “school choice.” The Supreme Court has invalidated programs that exclude religious schools from otherwise neutral state funding programs, even when monies might go to what are conventionally regarded as “religious” activities. Parents are increasingly dissatisfied with the educational and social experience their children receive in public schools, which only increased during the COVID period and was exacerbated by bitter culture-war conflict over the substance of what is being taught. Most recently, word comes from Oklahoma of the first religious charter school, a hybrid public-private entity whose constitutionality will surely be challenged and that would, in fact, be vulnerable under the no-aid regime of the past. But it may well survive and others like it grow.

Exciting and interesting times for lower school education (and, I should think, for its inevitable downstream effects on higher education). But many are deeply displeased with these developments, which, it is true, signal a real sea change for the American public school and the dismantling of yet one more American institution. Among the ranks of the unhappy is journalist Cara Fitzpatrick, who has a new book, The Death of the Public School: How Conservatives Won the War Over Education in America (Basic Books).

America has relied on public schools for 150 years, but the system is increasingly under attack. With declining enrollment and diminished trust in public education, policies that steer tax dollars into private schools have grown rapidly. To understand how we got here, The Death of Public School argues, we must look back at the turbulent history of school choice.     
   
Cara Fitzpatrick uncovers the long journey of school choice, a story full of fascinating people and strange political alliances. She shows how school choice evolved from a segregationist tool in the South in the 1950s, to a policy embraced by advocates for educational equity in the North, to a conservative strategy for securing government funds for private schools in the twenty-first century. As a result, education is poised to become a private commodity rather than a universal good.   

The Death of Public School presents the compelling history of the fiercest battle in the history of American education—one that already has changed the future of public schooling.  

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Confucian Common Goodism

Here in the West, some scholars are reviving an older, pre-liberal conceptions of politics that can be grouped under the heading of common good constitutionalism. At the heart of most of these conceptions, all of which are quite controversial, is a natural-law approach, deriving from Western sources like Aristotle and Christian, often specifically Catholic, sources. A new book from Oxford addresses common-good politics from a very different cultural perspective, Confucianism. Looks interesting. The book is Confucian Constitutionalism: Dignity, Rights, and Democracy, by political theorist Sungmoon Kim (City University of Hong Kong). Here is the publisher’s description:

Ongoing debates among political theorists revolve around the question of whether the overarching goal of Confucianism–serving the people’s moral and material wellbeing–is attainable in modern day politics without broad democratic participation. One side of the debate, voiced by Confucian meritocrats, argues that only certain people are equipped with the moral character needed to lead and ensure broad public wellbeing. The other side, voiced by Confucian democrats, argues that unless all citizens participate equally in the public sphere, a polity cannot attain the moral growth that Confucianism emphasizes.

Written by one of the leading voices of Confucian political theory, Confucian Constitutionalism presents a constitutional theory of democratic self-government that is normatively appealing and politically practicable in East Asia’s historically Confucian societies, which are increasingly pluralist, multicultural, and rights sensitive. While Confucian political theorists are preoccupied with how to build a Confucianism-inspired institution that would make a given polity more meritorious, Sungmoon Kim offers a robust normative theory of Confucian constitutionalism–what he calls “Confucian democratic constitutionalism”–with special attention to value pluralism and moral disagreement.

Building on his previous theory of Confucian democracy, Kim establishes egalitarian human dignity as the underlying moral value of Confucian democratic constitutionalism and derives two foundational rights from Confucian egalitarian dignity–the equal right to political participation and the equal right to constitutional protection of civil and political rights. He then shows how each of these rights justifies the establishment of the legislature and the judiciary respectively as two independent constitutional institutions equally committed to the protection and promotion of the people’s moral and material wellbeing, now reformulated in terms of rights. Aiming to contribute to both political theory and comparative law, Confucian Constitutionalism explains how Confucian democratic constitutionalism differs from and improves upon liberal legal constitutionalism, political constitutionalism, and Confucian meritocratic constitutionalism.