Monday, June 16, 2008

Are the Catholic Supreme Court Justices Opposing the Faith in their GITMO Opinion?

I highly suspect that the Catholic Blogsphere mirrors the real world of non Catholic bloggers(Righr or Left) as to the analysis of the recent Supreme Court case on Gitmo. That is:

-Most have no idea what the current Trial procedures are as to Prisioners at Gitmo

-70 Percent really don't have a clue what Habeus Corpus is

and 99 percent did not read the actual Opinion(s) that is available ONLINE

Sadly the Catholic angle to this was so predictable. VOX NOVA was out of the box with the sad title Catholic Justices Rule Shamefully Again. One can see my take (forgive the typos) in the comment section ( I am JH).

As I note in the above comments I think the Majority Opinion was very shoddy and I think the Chief Roberts Dissent has much merit. (Please read the whole Dissent not the little except that is provided at Vox Nova).

I have been waiting on Mirrors of Justice which a blog that has the contributions of several Catholic legal minds to chime in.

The first entry Should Catholic legal theory have more to say? ask if even their is a Catholic Legal theory angle at all.

Mr Vischer responds in a post HELL yes at CLT and Boumediene. There are some good things to look at in his post as he reminds us of Catholic Social Justice taching on the Courts and the 'the use of detention for the sole purpose of trying to obtain significant information for the trial. is worth looking at. However the whole piece is sort of ruined or at least turns me off by the last paragraph when he states :

" I believe Justice Kennedy's Majority opinion is fully in line with all of these principles that the Church insists upon. The four Justices who dissented? Four Catholics appointed by Republican Presidents."

Th implication being of Course the Catholics (Chosen by REPUBLICAN OF COURSE) are betraying or I suppose in Opposition to the faith somehow because they have a different viewpoint

Prof Garrett responds to what is obvious to me after the reading the dissents in his post .

He says in part:
That the four dissenting Justices are -- like Justice Kennedy -- Catholic does not suggest to me (as it perhaps does to Rob) that they missed or ignored their obligations as Catholics. (Nor do I necessarily take their dissents as reflecting a conscious application of Catholicism-inspired rule-of-law values in the case at hand.) The Faith does not tell us how far the Great Writ reached at the Founding, or how much process is required to substitute adequately for the writ, or whether, in a case like this, where the Executive and Congress are on the same page and therefore, at least since Youngstown, have enjoyed judicial deference, it is appropriate for the Court to nevertheless announce -- without, again, providing much guidance for the future -- that their joint determination is constitutionally invalid.

I am inclined to think, that the Faith neither requires nor authorizes willful judging, even in the service of, on balance, wise and humane policies. The dissenters, on my reading, are reacting to what they perceive as willful judging; they are not dissenting from Catholic teaching.

I think that is correct.

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