Copyright (c) 2009 All rights reserved. http://works.bepress.com/patrick_brennan Recent documents in Patrick McKinley Brennan en-us Fri, 13 Nov 2009 06:08:53 PST 3600 http://works.bepress.com/patrick_brennan/47 http://works.bepress.com/patrick_brennan/47 Fri, 05 Jun 2009 11:03:01 PDT Patrick McKinley Brennan http://works.bepress.com/patrick_brennan/46 http://works.bepress.com/patrick_brennan/46 Fri, 03 Apr 2009 12:50:46 PDT This paper considers the central normative claim of Martha Nussbaum's Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of America's Tradition of Religious Equality, viz., that the U.S. Constitution's religion clauses should be construed to provide equal (and extensive) protection to the vulnerable human faculty called conscience. The paper argues that Nussbaum's argument from Rawlsian political liberalism that leads to her normative constitutional claim amounts, perversely, to an attempt to justify the controversial by the more controversial. The paper goes on to argue that while equality and conscience are concepts that are reasonably contested, Nussbaum illegitimately gives them priority over the also reasonably contested concept of the liberty of the church(es). The paper concludes by arguing, with the help of Jacques Maritain and William Galston, that the political sphere is better shaped (and limited) by robust respect for the equality of humans, freedom of conscience, and the liberty of the churches (and certain other groups), but without our either pretending that any of them is not reasonably contestable or attempting to mold churches (and certain other groups) in the image of the state. Along the way, the paper evaluates Nussbaum's claim that Maritain was perhaps the first political liberal. Patrick McKinley Brennan http://works.bepress.com/patrick_brennan/45 http://works.bepress.com/patrick_brennan/45 Fri, 20 Mar 2009 11:10:41 PDT Patrick McKinley Brennan http://works.bepress.com/patrick_brennan/44 http://works.bepress.com/patrick_brennan/44 Tue, 03 Mar 2009 06:43:11 PST There is an ongoing debate about whether the U.S. Constitution includes - or should be interpreted to include - a principle of "church autonomy." Catholic doctrine and political theology, by contrast, clearly articulated a principle of "libertas ecclesiae," liberty of the church, when during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the Church differentiated herself from the state. This article explores the meaning and origin of the doctrine of the libertas ecclesiae and the proper relationship among churches, civil society, and government. In doing so, it highlights the points at which church and state should cooperate and the points at which mutual assistance would be ultra vires. Patrick McKinley Brennan http://works.bepress.com/patrick_brennan/43 http://works.bepress.com/patrick_brennan/43 Fri, 27 Feb 2009 12:50:11 PST Patrick McKinley Brennan http://works.bepress.com/patrick_brennan/40 http://works.bepress.com/patrick_brennan/40 Thu, 26 Feb 2009 09:14:53 PST Much modern jurisprudence attempts to move the locus of authority away from people with authority in order to locate it instead, for example, in rules or texts. This article argues that authority, wherever it exists, is a quality of the actions of persons. The article mounts this argument by showing how Justice Scalia's textualism is the legal analogue of a largely discredited form of "Christian positivism," one that leads to a form of authoritarianism. The article goes on to argue that authorianism can be avoided only by individuals' and their communities' becoming authoritative, including in the making and enforcement of law. Relying on a fairly thick normative anthropology to identify what is authoritative, this article mounts a non-liberal critique of the conservative jurisprudential doctrine that lies at the core of the American cult of the Supreme Court. Patrick McKinley Brennan http://works.bepress.com/patrick_brennan/39 http://works.bepress.com/patrick_brennan/39 Wed, 13 Aug 2008 08:25:38 PDT Patrick McKinley Brennan http://works.bepress.com/patrick_brennan/38 http://works.bepress.com/patrick_brennan/38 Wed, 13 Aug 2008 08:19:10 PDT Patrick McKinley Brennan http://works.bepress.com/patrick_brennan/37 http://works.bepress.com/patrick_brennan/37 Wed, 13 Aug 2008 08:13:33 PDT Patrick McKinley Brennan http://works.bepress.com/patrick_brennan/36 http://works.bepress.com/patrick_brennan/36 Wed, 13 Aug 2008 08:02:35 PDT This review essay of Mary Ann Glendon's Traditions in Turmoil (2006) explores such topics as tradition, moral discourse, human rights, subsidiarity, natural law, the common good, civil society, and constitutional and statutory interpretation. In doing so, it provides an introduction both to Catholic social thought and to the thought of Bernard Lonergan. Patrick McKinley Brennan