A culture of disdain for disabled and elderly persons is more likely to come about if we embrace ... more A culture of disdain for disabled and elderly persons is more likely to come about if we embrace a right to assisted suicide. Each endorsement of suicide endangers not only the lives but also the human dignity and quality of support relationships of persons with burdensome infirmities.
RESUMEN: Trátase en el presente artículo que la concentración absoluta del poder de interpretació... more RESUMEN: Trátase en el presente artículo que la concentración absoluta del poder de interpretación jurídica en un tribunal supremo es un error, sobre todo en una época en que los propios jueces alrededor del mundo están cada vez menos convencidos de que el derecho sea ciencia más que política. Se sostiene que la alternativa al monismo no es necesariamente el desorden. En vez de eso puede ser el pluralismo jurídico. La interpretación oficial del derecho puede ser dividida o equilibrada más que consolidada o eliminada completamente. Equilibrando acertadamente la separación de poderes y el sistema de frenos y contrapesos es posible que no se brinde una solución de principio a la tensión que subyace en el ideal de imperio del derecho, pero se ofrecen alternativas prácticas a la elección entre tiranía y desorden.
The skepticism of the American Legal Realists and their heirs threatens to make a politically neu... more The skepticism of the American Legal Realists and their heirs threatens to make a politically neutral science of law impossible and thus to undermine the liberal polity which needs such a science. Ronald Dworkin attempts to refute the skeptics and defend both legal theory and liberalism. However, the author points out, Dworkin and liberalism are themselves skeptics when it comes to moral principles, and, therefore, they cannot wholly escape from similar skepticism with regard to legal principles. Both Anglo-American and Continental legal history are examined in the course of these arguments.
This article explores a little-noticed dimension of abortion and assisted suicide (or voluntary e... more This article explores a little-noticed dimension of abortion and assisted suicide (or voluntary euthanasia): how choosing to reject those options can have a negative impact on the legally authorized choosers. Women who refuse abortion may be blamed for their choice by boyfriends, neighbors, employers, and others. Similarly, infirm or dying persons may find family and other caregivers upset by their refusal to agree to assisted suicide when voluntary death seems the sensible option. Finally, the author questions whether a life chosen as an option can ever have the dignity of a life simply accepted-that is, whether the child a mother once chose not to abort suffers from her having been able to choose otherwise, and whether the severely disabled but suiciderejecting person suffers from having to justify her continued existence.
If a claim that appears utterly convincing to the speaker is treated as absurd by others, the spe... more If a claim that appears utterly convincing to the speaker is treated as absurd by others, the speaker is likely to think those others willfully perverse. But perhaps those others simply fail to grasp some background truth that the speaker has assumed to be obvious. Rectification of their mistake can then provide a basis for unexpected agreement and for isolating those respondents who are in fact deeply hostile to the speaker's claim. This Article suggests that many of our fellow citizens find the pro-life argument against lethal embryo research to be absurd simply because they mistakenly treat gestation as a process of construction rather than as a process of development. Only an isolated segment of those who favor such research may have abandoned our traditional shared belief in human equality and dignity. The contrast between construction and development is also used to illuminate our disagreements over abortion and euthanasia. I N DECEMBER OF 2005 an op-ed piece by sociologist Dalton Conley appeared in The New York Times, stating that "most Americans...see a fetus as an individual under construction." This widespread vision 1 of the embryo and fetus as "under construction" is the key to understanding why good people may find our pro-life arguments to be absurd or otherwise non-rational, e.g., religious, particularly with regard to embryonic stem cell research. Just think of something being constructed (fabricated, assembled, composed, sculpted-in short, made), such as a house, or a scholarly article-or take a car on an assembly line. When is a car first there? At what point in the assembly line would we first say, "There's a car"? Some
For a summary of the meaning of these terms in traditional Catholic moral theology, see T. O'Donn... more For a summary of the meaning of these terms in traditional Catholic moral theology, see T. O'Donnell, Morals in Medicine (Westminister: Newman Press, 1960), pp. 39-44.
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