Supreme Knight Carl Anderson of the Knights of Columbus likes President Bush’s pick for the Supreme Court, Judge Samuel Alito. And it’s not just because Alito is Catholic. Anderson goes into surprising detail about his record. (Surprising, because he got it together so quick you’d think Anderson was tipped off ahead of time. Hmmm.)
“Judge Alito’s record as an appellate court judge is especially encouraging. His dissent in the Third Circuit’s decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey was a model of well- reasoned jurisprudence, and was cited by Chief Justice Rehnquist when the case reached the Supreme Court. Judge Alito made a very strong argument for upholding restrictions on abortion that had been adopted by the Pennsylvania legislature, and in the end, the Supreme Court agreed with him on all but one provision.”
“In other cases, Judge Alito has demonstrated a clear and proper understanding of the religion clauses of the First Amendment, writing majority opinions in cases rejecting the ACLU’s attempts to ban manger scenes from public property at Christmastime, and upholding the religious rights of Muslim police officers in Newark,” Anderson noted.
No conservative judicial activists
Some liberals accuse conservatives of having a double standard when it comes to judicial philosophy and abortion for nominees. Conservatives say that don’t want judicial activism, but someone who will abide strictly by the consitution. Liberals retort that conservatives just don’t want liberal judicial activists, but conservative ones who will strike down any law allowing abortion, regardless of constitutionality. But this is disingenuous.
I think you mean “…if a constitutional amendment setting Roe v. Wade style privacy protections WAS PASSED (instead of the extra-constitutional invention we have now), he wouldn inasmuch as it is in conformity with right reason and thus derives from the eternal law. But when a law is contrary to reason, it is called an unjust law; but in this case it ceases to be a law and becomes instead an act of violence”.96 And again: “Every law made by man can be called a law insofar as it derives from the natural law. But if it is somehow opposed to the natural law, then it is not really a law but rather a corruption of the law”.97
Laws which authorize and promote abortion and euthanasia are therefore radically opposed not only to the good of the individual but also to the common good; as such they are completely lacking in authentic juridical validity. Disregard for the right to life, precisely because it leads to the killing of the person whom society exists to serve, is what most directly conflicts with the possibility of achieving the common good. Consequently, a civil law authorizing abortion or euthanasia ceases by that very fact to be a true, morally binding civil law.
73. Abortion and euthanasia are thus crimes which no human law can claim to legitimize. There is no obligation in conscience to obey such laws; instead there is a grave and clear obligation to oppose them by conscientious objection.”
John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae
Al,
Since you provide no comment of your own, but just a quote from JP2, I have to assume you intend to say that a Catholic cannot support any manmade law that violates God’s law.
I agree, but my point is that a judge has no more capacity within his proper duties to overturn a law he disagrees with than, say, a policeman. I would expect a Catholic judge to actively oppose such laws along with all other Catholic citizens, but it is not within his proper sphere of duties to be a judicial activist and simply overturn constitutional laws with which he disagrees or to declare constitutional unconstitutional laws.
Each member of society must stay within his proper role.
Spectre,
You’re right. There’s my old typo tendency.
John Paul II’s point, made explicitly in the quote from St. Thomas, and the explication thereof, is that manmade laws at odds with the natural law, are not laws at all, and not only cannot be enacted, but cannot be upheld.
Therefore if there was a law, say, requiring taxpayers all to finance abortion, and that law was duly enacted, a Catholic Jurist could not say such a law was binding, nor judge other cases as if that law were true. This is what is meant by “conscientious objection” at the jurisprudential level.