Sub Deo Soundings 9/2/24
“Teachers as Witnesses,” by Aaron Urbanczyk, in The Catholic Thing (Dec. 3, 2009): The university is only coherent insofar as each distinct discipline is understood to be a lens through which the human person can perceive truth and reality. All those disciplines, pursued with the curiosity and passion for truth proper to full persons, lead […]
adjudication-related considerations in Sheetz v. El Dorado
The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Sheetz v. El Dorado County (2024) features a unanimous opinion for the Court by Justice Barrett and separate concurring opinions by three other Justices (Sotomayor joined by Jackson; Gorsuch solo; and Kavanaugh joined by Kagan and Jackson). These separate opinions address themselves in different ways to the narrow scope […]
“The Crisis in Teaching Constitutional Law”
The New York Times this morning has an opinion piece bearing this title. Despite the writer’s focus on federal constitutional law as developed by the Supreme Court of the United States, the malaise of the mandarins across much of the legal academy is much more pervasive. Caveat lector/auditor/discipulus.
“Benedict XVI, eleven years later”
This set of reflections by Andrea Gagliarducci at Vatican Reporting is insightful. (HT: The Pillar, Starting Seven)
The Demonic Blind Spot of A.I. Developers
Some of the worries about the development of A.I. relate to the technology taking on personal characteristics of intellect and will, and then initiating destructive acts. Something like that is much more plausibly understood as A.I. being coopted by demons, or fallen angels. A clear-eyed assessment of the output of large-language models can be informed […]
“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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Satisfied Man (a couple verses and a refrain for law students)
Can listening to the Hillbilly Thomists help you in the study of law? No doubt. Consider the first two verses and the refrain of “Satisfied Man”: You can put it in a contractWrap it in a conceptYou could put it in an advertYou could sing it with a rhymeBut if the law of the land […]
