Asking the right questions: Harnessing the insights of bernard lonergan for the rule of law

Journal of Law and Religion

Volumn 21, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 1-38

  Brennan, Patrick McKinley ^a  

^a VILLANOVA UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 84985013889     PISSN: 07480814     EISSN: 21633088     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0748081400002812     Document Type: Article

References (112)

1. Bernard Lonergan, Lecture 7: The A Priori and Objectivity, in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, Volume 5: Understanding and Being 156, 164 (Elizabeth A. Morelli & Mark D. Morelli eds., 2d ed., U. Toronto Press 1990). The claim that this capacity is “entirely” from nature is subject to the qualification, as Lonergan's elaborated statement reveals, that nature already includes grace that transforms nature while eluding the eye of the naturalist.
2. See Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, in Collected Works of Bernarad Lonergan (Frederick E. Crowe & Robert M. Doran eds., U. Toronto Press 2000).
3. What Lonergan says of the child is as true of the adult the child might (or might not) become: “If a child never asks questions, you [and here Lonergan might have said “reality”] “cannot teach him. You class him as retarded or lower than retarded. There has to be something with which to start ….” Bernard Lonergan, Lecture 1: Self-appropriation and Insight, in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, Volume 5: Understanding and Being 3, 5–6 (Elizabeth A. Morelli & Mark D. Morelli eds., 2d ed., U. Toronto Press 1990).
4. See Martin Stone, Focusing the Law: What Legal Interpretation is Not, in Law and Interpretation: Essays in Legal Philosophy 31 (Andrei Marmor ed., Clarendon Press 1995).
5. Pierre Schlag, The Problem of the Subject, 69 Tex. L. Rev. 1627, 1638 (1991).
6. Joseph Vining, From Newton's Sleep 223 (Princeton U. Press 1995).
7. See Steven D. Smith, Law's Quandary (Harv. U. Press 2004).
8. Patrick McKinley Brennan, Realizing the Rule of Law in the Human Subject, 43 B.C.L. Rev. 227, 249 (2002).
9. Id. at 240.
10. Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J., Insight: A Study of Human Understanding 221 (Phil. Lib. Inc. 1970).
11. See e.g. Mary Ann Glendon, A Nation Under Lawyers: How the Crisis in the Legal Profession Is Transforming American Society 291 n. 19 (Harv. U. Press 1994)
12. Mary Ann Glendon, Knowledge Makes a Noisy Entrance: The Struggle for Self-Appropriation in Law, in Lonergan Workshop Volume 10 119 (Fred Lawrence ed., Scholars Press 1994) [hereinafter Glendon, Knowledge]
13. David Granfield, The Inner Experience of Law: A Jurisprudence of Subjectivity (Cath. U. Am. Press 1988)
14. Thomas C. Kohler, The Integrity of Unrestricted Desire: Community, Values, and the Problem of Personhood, in Autonomy and Order: A Communitarian Anthology 57 (Edward W. Lehman ed., Rowman & Littlefield 2000)
15. Rev. Robert John Araujo, S.J., Method in Interpretation: Practical Wisdom and the Search for Meaning in Public Legal Texts, 68 Miss. L.J. 225 (1998).
16. Some of the author's own earlier efforts at this are Brennan, Miss. L.J.
17. Patrick McKinley Brennan, Meaning's Edge, Love's Priority, 101 Mich. L. Rev. 2060 (2003) [hereinafter Brennan, Meaning's Edge]
18. Patrick McKinley Brennan, Political Liberalism's Tertium Quiddity: Neutral “Public Reason,” 43 Am. J. Juris. 239 (1998).
19. See Lonergan, Am. J. Juris., at 9.
20. Francis George, Law and Culture in the United States, 48 Am. J. Juris. 131, 146(2003).
21. Gary Lawson, with his suggestion that what “the law” is has to be proved just as much as what “the facts” are has to be proved, is an exception awaiting development. Gary Lawson, Proving the Law, 86 Nw. U. L. Rev. 859 (1992).
22. S. Pacific Co. v. Jensen, 244 U.S. 205, 222 (1917) (Holmes, J., dissenting).
23. Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J., A Second Collection (William F. Ryan, S.J. & Bernard J. Tyrrell, S.J. eds., Westminster 1974) (paraphrase of Lonergan on p. 5 of unpaginated introduction by Tyrrell and Ryan).
24. James Boyd White, The Edge of Meaning 101 (U. Chi. Press 2001).
25. Some reservations about whether White in fact allows “the question” its full scope are raised at Brennan, Meaning's Edge, The Edge of Meaning, at 2078–2083.
26. H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law 139 (2d ed., Clarendon Press 1994).
27. Lonergan, The Concept of Law, at xxviii.
28. Id. at 412.
29. Id. at xviii.
30. On transcendental argument, see the sources cited at Brennan, Id., at 275, n. 178.
31. Vining, Id., at 344.
32. Steven Smith reads Vining's work similarly. See Smith, Id., at 171.
33. Lonergan, Id., at 332.
34. Bernard Lonergan, Philosophical Positions With Regard to Knowing, in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, Volume 6: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958–1964, at 214, 224 (Robert C. Croken et. al. eds., U. Toronto Press 1996).
35. Lonergan, Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958–1964, at 366.
36. Id. at 9.
37. Id. at 331.
38. Kohler, Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958–1964, at 62.
39. Collection, in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan vol. 4, 213–214 (Frederick E. Crowe & Robert M. Doran eds., U. Toronto Press 1988).
40. Lonergan continues: “It is to be attained only by attaining authentic subjectivity to seek and employ some alternative prop or crutch invariably leads to some measure of reductionism. As Hans-Georg Gadamer has contended at length in his Wahrheit und Methode, there are no satisfactory methodical criteria that prescind from the criteria of truth. Bernard J.F. Lonergan, Method in Theology 292 (Seabury Press 1979).
41. Lonergan, Method in Theology, at 636.
42. Id. at 221.
43. The quoted expression is Lonergan's. See Joseph Flanagan, Quest for Self-Knowledge: An Essay in Lonergan's Philosophy 136–137 (U. Toronto Press 1997).
44. David Burrell, C.S.C., Analogy and Philosophical Language 242 n. 33 (quoting Michael Novak) (Yale U. Press 1973).
45. Vining, Analogy and Philosophical Language, at 17.
46. Lonergan, Analogy and Philosophical Language, at 186.
47. Bernard Lonergan, Analogy and Philosophical Language, at 4.
48. Id. at 17.
49. The place of tradition in law, as a potentially self-correcting body of progressive and cumulative insights into valuable human living, is developed from a Lonerganian angle in Glendon, Knowledge, Id., at 119.
50. Lonergan, Id., at 16.
51. Id. at 18.
52. David Tracy, Plurality and Ambiguity: Hermeneutics, Religion, Hope 27 (U. Chi. Press 1987).
53. Id. at 18.
54. Lonergan, Id., at 332.
55. See Flanagan, Id., at 228–229.
56. See Brennan, Id., at 280–283.
57. See id. at 283–288, 299–305.
58. Lonergan, Id., at 37.
59. Id. at 39.
60. Lonergan's appropriation of what is going on when we know and choose value is far more subtle than this presentation can suggest. A fine study of the development of Lonergan's understanding of the root of ethics is Frederick E. Crowe, S.J., An Exploration of Lonergan's New Notion of Value, in Appropriating the Lonergan Idea 51 (Michael Vertin ed., Cath. U. Am. Press 1989).
61. If the point is not at least plausible to the reader, nothing further that could be said here is likely to change his or her mind. But what is said here can be a beginning of a change of mind. See infra Part IV.
62. See Lonergan, infra, at 48–50
63. Lonergan, infra, at 596–598.
64. Lonergan, infra, at 49.
65. Michael Novak, Bernard Lonergan: A New Approach to Natural Law, 41 Proceedings Am. Cath. Phil. Assn. 246, 247–248 (1967).
66. Ladislas Örsy, Theology and Canon Law: New Horizons for Legislation and Interpretation 154 (Liturgical Press 1992).
67. Kevin M. Crotty, Law's Interior: Legal and Literary Constructions of the Self 90 (Cornell U. Press 2001).
68. Vining, Law's Interior: Legal and Literary Constructions of the Self, at 128.
69. As Joseph Flanagan observes: To live freely, therefore, is not to live in an arbitrary way, but to live in the critically judged, critically evaluated way that you ought to live. The paradox of freedom is that to live freely is to live in an obligatory way. But it is you who obliges yourself. Your own intelligence obliges you, as does your self-evaluating self; you command yourself to be and to behave in truly worthwhile ways. In other words, there arises a spontaneous desire to maintain a consistency between your knowing and your doing. Flanagan, Law's Interior: Legal and Literary Constructions of the Self, at 201.
70. Henry M. Hart, Jr. & Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in the Making and Application of Law (Tentative Ed. 1958).
71. Kohler, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in the Making and Application of Law.
72. Örsy, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in the Making and Application of Law, at 45–46.
73. Vining, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in the Making and Application of Law, at 246.
74. See James Boyd White, Justice as Translation: An Essay in Cultural and Legal Criticism 96 (U. Chi. Press 1990).
75. Paul M. Bator, The Constitution as Architecture: Legislative and Administrative Courts Under Article III, 65 Ind. L.J. 233, 265 (1990).
76. See Patrick McKinley Brennan, Law, Natural Law, and Human Intelligence: Living the Correlation, —Cath. U. L. Rev.—(forthcoming 2006) (identifying limits on the judge's responsibility to implement the natural law).
77. See Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J., Dialectic of Authority, in A Third Collection: Papers by Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J. 5, 11 (Frederick E. Crowe, S.J. ed., Paulist Press 1985).
78. Joseph Vining, The Authoritative and the Authoritarian 218 (U. Chi. Press 1986).
79. Bernard Lonergan, Time and Meaning, in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, Volume 6: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958–1964, at 106 (Robert C. Croken et al. eds., U. Toronto Press 1996).
80. Flanagan, Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958–1964, at 205–206.
81. Id. at 212.
82. Lonergan, Id., at 202–203.
83. Flanagan, Id., at 200.
84. Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J., First Lecture: Religious Experience, in A Third Collection: Papers By Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S.J. 115, 121 (Frederick E. Crowe ed., Paulist Press 1985).
85. See Flanagan, A Third Collection: Papers By Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S.J., at 222–223.
86. Antonin Scalia, The Rule of Law as a Law of Rules, 56 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1175 (1989).
87. See Antonin Scalia, Common-Law Courts in a Civil Law System: The Role of United States Federal Courts in Interpreting the Constitution and Laws, in A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law 3, 25 (Amy Gutmann ed., Princeton U. Press 1997) (“Of all the criticisms leveled against textualism, the most mindless is that it is ‘formalistic’ The answer to that is, of course it's formalistic! The rule of law is about form.”)
88. See also Brennan, A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law, at 306–318.
89. For an example of how this works out in a particular and notorious case, see Brennan, A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law, at 305–318.
90. See Thomas W. Merrill, Textualism and the Future of the Chevron Doctrine, 72 Wash. U.L.Q 351, 371–372 (1994).
91. Vining, Wash. U.L.Q, at 76.
92. See Brennan, Wash. U.L.Q (arguing for the openness of legal discourse and system on the basis of the requirements of natural law and practical reason).
93. Tracy, Wash. U.L.Q, at 60.
94. Id. at 19.
95. Mary Ann Glendon, Comment, in A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law 95, 113 (Amy Gutmann ed., Princeton U. Press 1997).
96. H. Jefferson Powell, A Community Built on Words: The Constitution in History and Politics 209 (U. Chi. Press 2002).
97. Vining, A Community Built on Words: The Constitution in History and Politics, at 240.
98. Id. at 76.
99. Walter Brueggemann, The Endless Task of Interpretation, 53 Mercer L. Rev. 1019, 1026 (2002).
100. Vining, Mercer L. Rev., at 75–76.
101. It bears repeating that this openness does not entail or even that everything is always up for grabs: People living by the question are methodical. See also Powell, Mercer L. Rev., at 204–213 (summarizing the author's judgment of what is currently “settled” in American Constitutional theory and practice, including the modes of argument that are allowed and disallowed).
102. Much in the “jurisprudence of subjectivity” as I have developed it consists with the position set out by Michael Perry in Michael J. Perry, The Authority of Text, Tradition, and Reason: A Theory of Constitutional “Interpretation,” 58 S. Cal. L. Rev. 551 (1985). However, Perry's position there does not recognize (the need for justification from) the transcultural norm that is the pure question.
103. Tracy, S. Cal. L. Rev., at 11.
104. Michael J. White, Partisan or Neutral? The Futility of Public Political Theory 81 (Rowman & Littlefield 1997).
105. See id. at 81–121.
106. Henri de Lubac, S.J., Augustinianism and Modern Theology 296 (Lancelot Sheppard trans., Herder & Herder 1969).
107. “By the divine gift of somehow sharing in God's life {per gratiam}, [friendship with God] can have its real beginnings here and now {hie in praesenti}, for any of us.” John Finnis, Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory 331 (Oxford U. Press 1998).
108. See Patrick McKinley Brennan, Jacques Maritain (1882–1973), in The Teachings of Modern Christianity: On Law, Politics, and Human Nature vol. 1, 75 (John Witte, Jr. & Frank S. Alexander eds., Colum. U. Press 2006).
109. Lonergan, The Teachings of Modern Christianity: On Law, Politics, and Human Nature, at 191–203, 218–242.
110. See Lonergan, The Teachings of Modern Christianity: On Law, Politics, and Human Nature, at 107, 130–131, 338.
111. Biblia Sacra iuxta Vulgatam Clementinam (A. Colunya et L. Turrado eds., Biblioteca De Auctores Cristianos Matriti MCMLXXXV Septima editio (author's translation)).
112. Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J., Christology Today: Methodological Reflections, in A Third Collection: Papers by Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J. 74, 77 (Frederick E. Crowe, S.J. ed., Paulist Press 1985).