Philosophy Department

Seminar: Philosophy of Law: Religion and Politics
(PHLU 4925)

Charles Kelbley

This seminar will deal with three major topics that are provoking much debate in legal and philosophical circles in the United States and elsewhere. The first is the controversial relationship between law and religion, especially the degree to which religious beliefs should play a role, if any, in political and judicial decisions and generally in the public square. To get a handle on this issue, we will look at a recent book by Noah Feldman, Divided By God: America’s Church-State Problem – and What We Should Do About It. A second and related topic concerns the morality and legality of “torture,” which has been of great concern recently to many American citizens in view of alleged policies of employing torture by the current administration in the age of terrorism. We will discuss the essays in a book edited by Sanford Levinson, entitled Torture: A Collection, which addresses the subject from a number of different, often conflicting, perspectives – philosophical, legal, and practical –with articles by prominent lawyers and philosophers. The third topic embraces many of the concerns of the first two as well as many others. It deals with the great divide among competing approaches to judicial decisions, which Cass Sunstein labels Fundamentalism, Minimalism, and Perfectionism in his book Radicals in Robes: Why Extreme Right-Wing Courts are Wrong for America. As time permits, our discussions will focus on the greater part of each of these books as well as other materials. Several short papers on the readings will be assigned as well as a longer paper for the course.

The Canadian Tribute to Human Rights, Ottawa.