Recovering Self-Evident Truths : Catholic Perspectives on American Law

by Scaperlanda, Michael A.; Collett, Teresa Stanton

• ISBN13: 9780813214825
• ISBN10: 0813214823
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-07-11
• Publisher: Catholic Univ of Amer Pr

Summary

This Book presents an engaging collection of essays exploring "catholic" and "Catholic" perspectives on American law--catholic in their claims of universal truths, and Catholic in their grounding in the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. What emerges is a model of human freedom and flourishing that has its foundation in the transcendent vocation of each and every human person. The 2000-year-old Catholic Church played a pivotal role in the formation of the western legal culture. Does it have anything of relevance left to offer that culture in the 21st century? The contributors to Recovering Self-Evident Truths answer with a resounding yes. The opening essays present the guiding premises of the volume as a whole: human persons must be respected by governments and law because their objective dignity arises from being made in the image and likeness of God. Reasoning from these premises, the next set of essays situates the person within community, exploring the implications for the American legal system of taking seriously Catholic understanding of subsidiarity, solidarity, the common good, and the relationship between freedom and truth. The next set of essays concludes the foundational material by engaging dominant secular political and legal theory from a Catholic perspective. With the foundation set, the essays in the second half of the book explore eight specific substantive areas of the law--Contract Law, Property Law, Tort Law, Criminal Law, Labor Law, Family Law, Immigration Law, and International Law--through a Catholic lens. Recovering Self-Evident Truths is particularly timely: a majority of the justices on the United States Supreme Court are Catholic; Catholics represent apivotal voting demographic in the American political landscape; and the issue of religion and religious values in the public square is hotly debated as some warn against a creeping theocracy. This book demonstrates that religiously founded values can serve to provide constructive proposals for building a more just society.

Table of Contents

The foundations of Catholic legal theory : a primer	p. 15
A theological anthropology of the human person	p. 39
A philosophical anthropology of the human person : can we know the nature of human persons?	p. 52
Truth as the ground of freedom : a theme from John Paul II	p. 69
Solidarity, subsidiarity, and the consumerist impetus of American law	p. 85
The Constitution and the common good : a perspective on the Catholic contribution	p. 104
Why we should (and should not) be liberals	p. 131
Reason, freedom, and the rule of law : reflections on their significance in Catholic thought	p. 152
Labor law : "making life more human" : work and the social question	p. 163
Contract law : a Catholic approach?	p. 191
Property law : Catholic social thought and the new urbanism : a shared vision to confront the problem of urban sprawl?	p. 205
Tort law : toward a trinitarian theory of products liability	p. 220
Criminal law : "everlasting splendours" : death-row volunteers, lawyers' ethics, and human dignity	p. 254
Family law : natural law, marriage, and the thought of Karol Wojtyla	p. 275
Immigration law : a Catholic Christian perspective on immigration justice	p. 292
International law : foundations of human rights : the unfinished business	p. 317
Afterword : Catholics and the two cultures	p. 333
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.