Catholic Legal Perspectives

This book affords the opportunity to examine our system of justice, identifying in several critical areas, how Catholic principles and legal principles overlap and diverge. While it is not expected or required that the reader agree, in every instance, with either the law or the Catholic perspectives, the reader of this work will come away with an understanding of both. Critiques and responses are included throughout. Topics include family issues (marriage, same sex marriage, divorce, annulment), immigration, public assistance, and matters of life and death, including abortion, euthanasia, and the death penalty. The book is aimed at law students, lawyers, those in Catholic undergraduate and graduate schools, and others who are interested in examining Catholic views regarding our system of justice. The book includes excerpts from cases and statutes, law review articles, and commentaries. It contains important Church documents including excerpts from papal encyclicals, communications from the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops, theologians, and others. Each chapter concludes with a "For Further Thought" section, asking the reader to consider, apply, and examine the principles discussed in that chapter. It asks law students and lawyers to reflect on whether these principles will or should affect their representation of clients or the way judges should approach cases brought before them. The book contains a bibliography at the end of each chapter for further reading and study. "[This book] presents a very balanced analysis of the differences between Roman Catholic and secular views on particular legal issues. ...In each chapter, Piatt sets forth the Catholic church's position with regard to key controversies and how it differs from prevailing norms of American law. As well, he thoughtfully demonstrates how and where divisions exist with the Catholic church concerning the manner in which Catholics -- particularly lawyers -- should reconcile the teachings of the church with their secular roles. ...In conclusion, Catholic Legal Perspectives is a clear, intriguing presentation of the tensions inherent between any religion and a secular legal system." Mark Rush, Law and Politics Book Review (Vol. 23 No. 1)

Edited by Ronald J. Rychlak, American Law from a Catholic Perspective is one of the most comprehensive surveys of American legal topics by major Catholic legal scholars. Contributors explore bankruptcy, corporate law, environmental law, family law, immigration, labor law, military law, property, torts, and several different aspects of constitutional law, among other subjects. Readers will find probing arguments that bring to bear the critical perspective of Catholic social thought on American legal jurisprudence. Essays include Michael Ariens’s account of Catholicism in the intellectual discipline of legal history, William Saunders’s assessment of human rights and Catholic social teaching, Hadley Arkes’s look at the place of Catholic social thought with respect to bioethics, and many others on major legal topics and their intersection with Catholic social teaching. American Law from a Catholic Perspective is essential reading for all Catholic lawyers, judges, and law students, as well as an important contribution to non-Catholic readers seeking guidance from a faith tradition on questions of legal jurisprudence. Based on well-developed and established ideas in Catholic social thought, the evaluations, suggestions, and remedies offer ample food for thought and a basis for action in the realm of legal scholarship.

This book explores for the first time the broad range of ways in which Christian thought intersects with American legal theory. Eminent legal scholars—including Stephen Carter, Thomas Shaffer, Elizabeth Mensch, Gerard Bradley, and Marci Hamilton—describe how various Christian traditions, including the Catholic, Calvinist, Anabaptist, and Lutheran traditions, understand law and justice, society and the state, and human nature and human striving. The book reveals not only the diversity among Christian legal thinkers but also the richness of the Christian tradition as a source for intellectual and ethical approaches to legal inquiry. The contributors bring various perspectives to the subject. Some engage the prominent schools of legal thought: liberalism, legal realism, critical legal studies, feminism, critical race theory, and law and economics. Others address substantive areas, including environmental, criminal, contract, torts, and family law, as well as professional responsibility. Together the essays introduce a new school of legal thought that will make a signal contribution to contemporary discussions of law.

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

Bioethics, Law, and Human Life Issues: A Catholic Perspective on Marriage, Family, Contraception, Abortion, Reproductive Technology, and Death and Dying draws on the Magisterial teaching of the Catholic Church to outline a Catholic response to a host of controversial issues related to human life. Scarnecchia lays out a Catholic moral theology based on the writings of Pope John Paul II and Thomas Aquinas, and he then applies those Christian moral principles to today's most contentious ethical issues, including reproductive technology, embryo adoption, contraception, abortion, family and same-sex marriage, and euthanasia and assisted suicide. This review of Catholic moral principles brings together an in-depth consideration of the central human life issues of our day with abundant reference to the Church's social teaching and to contrasting positions of today's leading ethicists.

'Canon Law' explores the canon law of the Roman Catholic Church from a comparative perspective. The introduction to the book presents historical examples of antinomian and legalistic approaches to canon law.

A practical guide to helping today's Catholic school teachers deal with the legal issues facing them.