Opinion: What’s the miter? (II)

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The legal blogosphere continues to buzz over the fact that all five Supreme Court justices who voted to uphold a federal ban on “partial-birth” abortions are Roman Catholics. Especially interesting is an exchange between two law professors, Geoffrey Stone and Rick Garnett, both teaching at the University of Chicago.

In the spirit of Christopher Hitchens, Stone refers to the five Catholics as “faith-based justices,” and notes that “the four justices who are either Protestant or Jewish all voted in accord with settled precedent.”

Garnett counters with the observation that “the Catholic understanding of vocation, and of justice under law” invites a Catholic judge to “work conscientiously in every case to identify not her own preferred or ‘faith-based’ outcome’ but the answer that is given by the relevant legal texts, rules, and precedents.”

Barnett has a good point, and I myself have pooh-poohed the idea of a “Catholic justice.’ On the other hand, it makes me nervous to read that Catholic bishops are celebrating the decision in a way that encourages the notion that the ruling was a victory for “the effort to build respect for life in the country.”