Iredell in Minge v. Gilmour
In following up on some research regarding Calder v. Bull and The Decline of Natural Law, I recently had occasion to read this fine opinion by Justice Iredell in Minge v. Gilmour (Cir. Ct. D. N.C. 1798). Recommended.
“Every task usually demands a price, especially a task so lofty as service to truth.”
In an interview with journalist Peter Seewald published as Salt of the Earth: The Church at the End of the Millenium, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger explained that the price of serving truth is usually paid out in small coin: Ratzinger: I don’t deny that there has been development and change in my life, but I hold firmly […]
“Now, any truth demands belief …”
In Part V, Chapter 7, paragraph 4 of St. Bonaventure’s Breviloquium, we read: 4. Now, any truth demands belief, so a greater truth demands stronger belief, and the greatest of all truths, supreme belief. Now, the truth of the First Principle is infinitely greater than all created truth and infinitely more radiant than any light […]
A fivefold typology of signs by which the one divine will of God’s good pleasure is designated
In Part I, Chapter 9, paragraph 2 of Bonaventure’s Breviloquium, we find: 2. The divine will is the will of God’s good pleasure. But given God’s decision to be made known through signs, that one divine will is designated according to a fivefold typology of signs—that is, as precept, prohibition, counsel, fulfillment, and permission. In […]
Justice Barrett explains THaT constitutionalism at CUA’s Columbus School of Law
The inaugural judicial event of our second year of programming for the Project on Constitutional Originalism and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition was A Conversation with Justice Amy Coney Barrett. The conversation, which took place last Thursday September 21, covered a wide range of topics relating to the practices of constitutional interpretation and adjudication in the […]
Reading the Presumptive Textualism of Vermeulean Common Good Constitutionalism Between the Lines
One of the challenging features of interpreting Professor Adrian Vermeule’s Common Good Constitutionalism that Jeff Pojanowski and I encountered in Recovering Classical Legal Constitutionalism was to assess the extent to which Vermeule’s book is best read esoterically. We decided to respond to the exoteric argumentation on its own terms while also suggesting what we understood to […]
New LICIT Course Beginning Today: Natural Law and the American Experience
Beginning last spring, Bill Rooney and I have been offering a seminar each semester on Law in the Catholic Intellectual Tradition (“LICIT”). This fall, the LICIT seminar is “Natural Law and the American Experience.” Here’s the course description: We will examine the content of natural law as understood in the American and Catholic traditions, invite […]
Throwback to the ’80s: Parents for Decency through Law at the Happy Times Store
As far as we know, which is only back to the 1860s on one side of the family and the early 1900s on the other, my brother Brendan and I are the only lawyers in our family. The wrinkle in this is that our mother, Bonnie Walsh, appeared in court as a quasi-lawyer or something […]
The Internal Stratification of Thomistic Juridical Realism (Popović & Schouppe)
In Natural Law & Thomistic Juridical Realism: Prospects for a Dialogue with Contemporary Legal Theory, Petar Popović draws on the scholarship of Jean-Pierre Schouppe to present a three-level account of Thomistic juridical realism. In Chapter 2, “The Realistic Conception of Right and Juridicity,” Popović includes a section titled “The Internal Stratification of Thomistic Juridical Realism.” The […]
Cultivating the awareness of God and cultivating university donors
Catholic higher education in the United States faces some difficulties in common with higher education in the United States more generally, some difficulties specific to the Catholic Church, and some difficulties specific to Catholic education in the United States more generally. At the same time, institutions of Catholic higher education possess potentialities for renewal, including […]
