St. Maximos' Hut

There is a very long and thoughtful post on same sex marriage issues over at Volokh, from guest-blogger Maggie Gallagher. It's drawn an extraordinary number of comments (283 when I checked).

It raises an interesting point relevant here:

Remember how we were promised that unilateral divorce would expand liberty, and only affect people in bad marriages? Meanwhile the government reduced everyone’s marriage contract to the status of a gambling debt--alone of contracts, marriage promises cannot be enforced. Unilateral divorce changed the whole culture of marriage, not just those who divorce. And the people who advocated for it were so sure that more divorce would make children better off, weren’t they? Only a fool, or a religious zealot, could disagree.

I tend to take a libertarian view of marriage - it ought to be a matter of contract between the participants and the institution certifying the marriage. If the state is going to get involved, however, it ought to not be mucking things up by making them worse - and introducing unilateral divorce clearly made women and children worse off by reducing their bargaining power relative to men. I'm not shoved off my prior belief that marriage ought to be defined by the institution certifying it, and that the institution ought not to be the state, but Gallagher's discussion raises some very interesting issues.

An interesting endorsement of what sounds like a fascinating book on religious liberty from The Volokh Conspiracy's guest blogger on single-sex marriage issues (her posts on those are worth reading too). The book is Seamus Hasson's The Right to Be Wrong. I need to read it because one chapter is "The Case of the Sacred Parking Barrier" about a San Francisco legal battle. With chapter titles like that, it must be good. Thank God for Amazon. (I do.)

BY: SUSAN J. STABILE
St. John's University
School of Law

Available on SSRN here.

ABSTRACT:
Motivated by a search for alternative ways of addressing the issues of how we think about corporations and whether there is a legitimate basis upon which to argue that a corporation has an obligation to behave in an ethical and socially responsible way, this article looks to what Catholic legal theory contributes to our thinking about the nature of the corporation. Scholars such as Michael Novak, Steve Bainbridge and Mark Sargent have argued for competing visions of a Catholic vision of a corporation.
This Article articulates a particular Catholic vision of the corporation, a communitarian vision that sees the corporation both as a community and as existing as part of a larger community, a vision that emphasizes the corporation's social responsibilities. It then elaborates on what this vision means about a corporation's obligations and the role of law in regulating corporations. Finally, the Article defends the value of proposing a Catholic vision of the corporation, addressing the question why Catholic social thought has something useful to add to public debate in a pluralist society.


I am going to have to read this carefully, because I don't quite understand the concept of a "Catholic view" of the corporation. Corporations are legal entities created, more or less, today through general corporation statutes (in the 19th century and earlier, you generally had to go to the relevant legislature for a charter.) All of which suggests to me that corporations are simply a fact of the legal landscape, just as horses are a fact of the landscape around my house.

It seems to me that there could well be a "Catholic view" (or whichever denomination you choose) of how people who form corporations ought to act, just as there could be a "Catholic view" of how tortfeasors ought to behave.

But, when we get to defining legal obligations of the corporation to be to the larger community, I get a bit confused. I have just started the excellent The Church and The Market: A Catholic Defense of the Free Economy by Thomas Woods, Jr., and his opening chapter discusses the question of the intersection of faith and economics (which is to say, faith and reason). After quoting several devout economists on their concerns about Church teachings on economics where those teachings appear to contradict basic economic principles, Woods writes:

All these economists have tried to say is that if churchmen wish to weigh in on important economic questions, they cannot do so in a way that legitimately binds the conscience unless they pay very serious attention to what the secular discipline of economics has to say.

It is perfectly unobjectionable for churchmen to say that churches should be built with the sturdiest materials in order that they might remain standing for as long as possible. But they go beyond their competence as churchmen and their ability to bind the faithful on pain of mortal sin as soon as they say "The best building materials are A, B, and C, and the wisest techniques to use are X, Y, and Z." A churchman qua churchman has been vouchsafed no particular insight into such a question. (p.6)

It thus seems reasonable to me to say that any attempt to understand corporations cannot be taken seriously unless it comes to grips with, for example, Coase's Nature of the Firm. Understanding corporations without understanding transactions costs, agency theory, and so forth is like an understanding of physics without gravity - it isn't likely to tell us much about the world in which we live.

That all said, I look forward to reading Stabile's article and learning exactly what she means by a "Catholic view" of corporations. The paper sounds interesting from the abstract.

"A Tale of Two Women: The Vilification of Brigitte Bardot and Oriana Fallaci"

BY: DAVID R. BARNHIZER
Cleveland State University
Cleveland-Marshall College of Law

Document: Available from the SSRN Electronic Paper Collection

Here's the abstract:

A process of thought and speech control relying on the strategic use of law has emerged in Europe and the U.S. Variants of the crimes of heresy, blasphemy and vilification are regaining force as effective means of suppressing dissent through criminal offense and civil sanction. New forms of these traditionally religious offenses are being used by governments and private interests that collectively have attained a degree of power that justifies placing them in the position of a secular or religious "church" - depending on the particular interests involved.
Whether through the use of direct government power or informal but well-organized private collective action, these interests are intimidating critics into silence and punishing those who will not bow to their will. Both the Left and the Right use this strategy to seize power, stifle opposition and impose sanctions on anyone who does not bow to their preferences. Controls on speech are a core part of the strategy, and this is reaching disturbing levels in Western societies.

This brings us to the vilification of Brigitte Bardot and Oriana Fallaci. Brigitte Bardot wrote A Cry in the Silence to counter what she perceived as the cowardice of European society, particularly France, that produced an unwillingness even to consider what she felt were dangerous impacts of extensive immigration into France of millions of people whose values and traditions not only differed radically from those of French culture but often explicitly rejected that culture. She was criminally prosecuted, convicted and fined for her comments.
Oriana Fallaci authored The Force of Reason and several other works as a clarion call following the 9/11 tragedy. Her intent was to warn about what she considered the dangers of Islam for European society. Fallaci was recently charged in Italy with the criminal offense of "vilification."

As the experiences of Brigitte Bardot and Oriana Fallaci indicate, the expanding limitations on what constitutes allowable discourse in the European Union and its members augurs forebodingly for freedom of expression. This is a dangerous time in Western society. It is a moment when the desire of governments to react to the threat of militant Islam produces responses that can destroy the essence of the Rule of Law. The problem is that it is easy to justify restrictions on speech due to the crisis psychology created by the fact we are in an unofficial state of quasi-martial law unfolding within an undeclared guerrilla war. My foundational principle is unsurprising and simple. No one and no institution should be insulated from political criticism in a democratic society. A free speech advocate remarked in admittedly crude terms that, "no one is [or should be] immune from being called an [expletive deleted]." This principle of allowing and encouraging free, open and even insensitive communication is nothing new in a democratic society where the constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of speech, association and religion are core values instilled in the structure of our law and deepest beliefs. Oddly
- given the mounting state and private pressure against freedom of speech, thought and conscience - democratic society needs to recommit to these core values more than ever. Unfortunately, we have most likely passed the "point of no return" in the degree to which we have corrupted our social discourse through inhibition and intimidation. At a minimum we must confront the extent to which we have suppressed free speech in the name of admirable causes. We must recapture the willingness to be insulted and to "call a fool a fool" or even to be one.

Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, Senior Fellow in Economics at the Acton Institute, has posted an interesting article today. She poses a "big question"-Why do some countries develop economically, while others stagnate?-and finds the answer in analyzing levels of corruption driven by excessive regulation as inhibitors to economic growth.

It is a short piece and states a number of truths, but worthy of a look as a "pocket apologetic" on the issue.

Fr. C.

A very good reflection on all three of those things here (via Instapundit).

The reviewer, John Coleman, has a very interesting reflection "Why I am a Christian" on his site as well:

That is why I am a Christian. Take all of the other options—cold, hard, materialist, and utterly afraid of their own dogmatic foundations—into account, and nothing else seems quite right. Nothing explains the shape of our bodies and souls or the warmth when those entities unite. Nothing explains our longing where no longing should be for a home buried somewhere in the sky. Nothing else portends to explain that itch we have at the base of our hearts, the constant nagging of displacement in a world in which our existence should seem right.

Stare into the sky tonight. When you finally start looking and start to see, explain to me the absence in a more coherent and hopeful way. Tell me something inside you doesn’t start to wonder why. Tell me some other explanation, any explanation, could be right.

I was reading about Mark Jen's termination from Google, as part of preparation of this month's Termination of Employment, a newsletter I coauthor, and found a very moving account of his baptism and conversion to Christianity.