St. Maximos' Hut

David Kopel has some interesting thoughts on the invocation of Martin Luther by an opponent of concealed carry legislation in Wisconsin - turns out Luther is against the proposed law. Kopel has some quite a bit to say - this bit seems especially appropriate: "It seemed astonishing for Rev. Larson to claim to know Luther's opinion on a bill written more than four centuries after his death." (I should note that there was no mention of Luther's position on concealed carry in any of the material about him I saw in Geneva.)

Kopel takes an interesting look at Luther's writings on self-defense and the duty to defend others.

I've been reading "Faith and Liberty: The Economic Thought of the Late Scholastics" by Alejandro A. Chafuen, on the recommendation of Tom Palmer at Cato. Tom introduced me to the economic thought of the Spanish Scholastics (often called the School of Salamanca), a group of Catholic scholars/priests/monks/etc. from roughly 1350-1500. This group had some startlingly good economists among them and this is a very good introduction to their writings.

Here's Tomas de Mercado, quoted at some length in the book on why private property is superior to common property:

because people love most those things that belong to them. If I love God, it is my God, Creator and Savior whom I love. If I love him who engendered me, it is my father whom I love. If a father loves his children, it is because they are his. If a wife loves her husband it is because he belongs to her and vice versa. . . . And if I love a friend it is my friend or my parent or my neighbor. If I desire the common good, it is for the benefit of my religion or my country or my republic. Love always involves the word mine, and the concept of property is basic to love's nature and essence.

Chaufen then writes:

Due to original sin, there is so much covetousness that "the whole world is insufficient for one person, much less for everyone." Realizing that economic goods are scarce, Mercado espoused private property as an efficient method of reducing-if not overcoming-scarcity.

Again quoting Mercado:

We cannot find a person who does not favor his own interests or who does not prefer to furnish his home rather than that of the republic. We can see that privately owned property flourishes, while city- and council-owned property suffers from inadequate care and worse management. In this regard Aristotle states that the pleasure that a man feels while working at his own business is inevitable. It is not easy to explain how important it is for a man to know that he is the owner of the thing he produces. On the other hand, people treat common enterprises with great indifference. ... After man's loss of innocence, it becomes necessary for each individual to share in the things of this world, in real estate or moveable riches. . . . If universal love will not induce people to take care of things, private interest will. Hence, privately owned goods will multiply. Had they remained in common possession, the opposite would be true.

After talking up the common law at IPN today with Julian Morris (who seems to have lost an "s" somewhere), I climbed St. Paul's dome in London, together wtih Rob Natelson, a law professor from the University of Montana who is on sabbatical here. (Rob has done very interesting work on the original understanding of the US Constitution, a project he is furthering with research here). A magnificant work of art - far richer and more moving than the cathedral in Geneva, in my opinion. Standing under the dome, surrounded by glorious art depicting assorted Biblical events was quite moving. A good day, albeit one that left religion and economics somewhat compartmentalized.

Rob and I did discuss the role of religion in shaping culture - some of my work has been on the role of institutions in the 19th century American west and we talked over the role that people's understandings of Biblical principles likely played when they got out west into a land with few formal constraints on behvavior. Perhaps PJ, who has done really important work on the west, might offer some comments on this. More on it later.

This looks interesting:


"When 2 or 3 Come Together"

BY: TRACEY LOUISE MEARES
University of Chicago Law School
KELSI BROWN CORKRAN
Federal Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit

Document: Available from the SSRN Electronic Paper Collection:


Paper ID: U of Chicago, Public Law Working Paper No. 107
Date: October 2005

Contact: TRACEY LOUISE MEARES
Email: Mailto:TLMEARES@MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU
Postal: University of Chicago Law School
1111 E. 60th St.
Chicago, IL 60637 UNITED STATES
Phone: 312-702-7582
Fax: 312-702-0730
Co-Auth: KELSI BROWN CORKRAN
Email: Mailto:kbcorkran@gmail.com
Postal: Federal Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
Baltimore, MD 21201 UNITED STATES

ABSTRACT:
This article investigates policies that are responsive to crime in disadvantaged, urban neighborhoods from a community-based context. The vehicle is an analysis of a community-wide prayer vigil held in Chicago in May of 1997. The vigil resulted from a collaboration between the Chicago Police Department and hundreds of (mostly) African-American churches on Chicago's West Side.
Strikingly, the local police district's commander facilitated the vigil. We explain the sociological and political significance of this collaboration by drawing upon the "Chicago School" of urban sociology and demonstrating theoretically and empirically the potential for the collaboration, through the integration of key community institutions, to promote community capacity to resist crime and to complete other goals and projects of residents. The article's end addresses constitutional questions. If collaboration between churches and the police through religious activity enhances the community efficacy of poor minority neighborhoods, is there any way to reconcile the benefits of such activity with constitutional concerns about religious establishment? We focus on the extent to which African Americans have been able to influence this jurisprudence through litigation rather than the internal structure of Establishment Clause jurisprudence. A review of the litigation reveals the particular nature of the involvement of African Americans in the development of Establishment Clause jurisprudence, and it demonstrates plainly the extent to which judicial sanction of church-state interaction has had, and continues to have, important racial consequences. African Americans, through representative litigating institutions, have consistently recognized the disparate impact of church-state partnerships, but the Court has never acknowledged the non-religious implications of its Establishment Clause decisions. As a result, Establishment Clause jurisprudence is disconnected from the realities of disparate impact, and that is potentially problematic for African-American communities. We believe excavation of the realities of disparate impact is critical in assessing the extent to which modern church state partnerships should be allowed or even blessed by the state.
<