Religion & Law

As Patrick and Amy have already mentioned, we had the pleasure of participating in a panel discussion at Catholic University last week on the subject of "Realizing Religious Mission in Legal Education."  Their remarks were, no surprise, both inspiring and insightful.  I was speaking from notes, but tried to get across the following:  First, the "religious mission" of a law school and a dedication to that mission's realization should never be seen as an excuse for failing to display (in Judge Noonan's words) the "qualities common to all excellent schools," including rigorous standards for scholarship.

Second, I emphasized three ideas:  novelty, opportunity, and community.  The point of "novelty" is to underscore the fact that the "Catholic law school project" is not an exercise in reaction, nostalgia, or retrieval.  The kind of enterprise we are talking about is new.  "Opportunity" suggests that an emphasis on, and aspiration to, Catholic character presents a way to capture the benefits of "institutional pluralism".  A distinctive law school is more likely to be interesting and, therefore, attractive.  Finally, "community.'  A Catholic law school is a community of scholars, and that community will include people who are not doing "Catholic stuff" in their scholarship.  A danger, it seems to me, in the mission-project is that the "mission" becomes the property of "professional Catholics" or church-state specialists.