The faculty at the Columbus School of Law have published books in a wide variety of legal and non-legal disciplines. This repository collection includes a selection of some of the many books authored by our faculty.
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What Are Freedoms For?
John H. Garvey
We generally suppose that it is our right to freedom which allows us to make the choices that shape our lives. The right to have an abortion is called "freedom of choice" because, it is said, a woman should be free to choose between giving birth and not doing so. Freedom of speech protects us whether we want to salute the flag or burn it. There is a correlative principle: one choice is as good as another. Freedom is not a right that makes moral judgments. It lets us do what we want.
John Garvey disputes both propositions. We should understand freedom, he maintains, as a right to act, not a right to choose; and furthermore, we should view freedom as a right to engage in actions that are good and valuable. This may seem obvious, but it inverts a central principle of liberalism--the idea that the right is prior to the good. Thus friendship is a good thing; and one reason the Constitution protects freedom of association is that it gives us the space to form friendships.
This book casts doubt on the idea that freedoms are bilateral rights that allow us to make contradictory choices: to speak or remain silent, to believe in God or to disbelieve, to abort or to give birth to a child. Garvey argues that the goodness of childbearing does not entail the goodness of abortion; and if freedom follows from the good, then freedom to do the first does not entail the freedom to do the second. Each action must have its own justification. Garvey holds that if the law is to protect freedoms, it is permissible--indeed it is necessary--to make judgments about the goodness and badness of actions.
The author’s keen insights into important rights issues, communicated with verve and a variety of both real and hypothetical cases, will be of interest to all who care about the meaning of freedoms.
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Constitutional Law for the Citizen Soldier (3rd ed.)
Michael F. Noone Jr., Dennis R. Hunt, Donald N. Zillman, and Michael J. Benjamin
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The Contractual Reallocation of Procreative Resources and Parental Rights: The National Endowment Critique
William J. Wagner
An examination of the implications for the law as it becomes entangled in the commercialization of new reproductive technologies. The rule of contract is proposed as a basis for the reorganization of human reproductive behavior.
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Bioethics and the Law: Medical, Socio-Legal and Philosophical Directions for a Brave New World
George P. Smith II
This book tackles the major issues of what has been loosely named 'The New Biology.' Contemporary advances in biotechnology and medical science are creating untold opportunities for not only biological or human engineering, but eugenic advancement as well as preconceptual and prenatal diagnosis-through genetic screening-of genetic diseases. While these new technologies have the ability to shape life even before it begins, they sadly often prolong it past the time it should have a dignified ending. George P. Smith discusses the challenges and the socio-legal, ethical, medical, philosophical, and political constructs involved in the decision making process.
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Popes, Canonists, and Texts, 1150-1550
Kenneth Pennington
Several different approaches to medieval legal history are evident in these articles. The first group uses law to investigate the principles that governed society, whether clearly articulated or not, and ask how the intellectual structures of the "ius commune" affected the institutions of government and the presuppositions of the people. The second group of articles illustrates the importance of returning to the manuscript sources of later medieval texts, rather than relying on the early printed editions. In both parts Professor Pennington also focuses on the lives of individual jurists, contending that these provide a key to the understanding of their thought, their position in society, and the connections between the two. One of these articles is previously unpublished, and a number of others have been revised and updated for publication.
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The Beginning of the Constitutional Era: A Bicentennial Comparative Analysis of the First Modern Constitutions
Rett R. Ludwikowski and William Fox
This book evolved as part of the Comparative & International Law Program at the Columbus School of Law, The Catholic University of America, which sponsors studies on the expansion of constitutionalism around the world. Sparked by the bicentennial celebrations of the framing of the U.S. Constitution & the first Polish & French Constitutions this study focuses on the beginning of the constitutional. era. The intent is not merely to narrate each country's constitutional history but to identify the factors that both assisted & impeded constitutional development in the three countries.
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The Prince and the Law, 1200-1600: Sovereignty and Rights in the Western Legal Tradition
Kenneth Pennington
The power of the prince versus the rights of his subjects is one of the basic struggles in the history of law and government. In this masterful history of monarchy, conceptions of law, and due process, Kenneth Pennington addresses that struggle and opens an entirely new vista in the study of Western legal tradition. Pennington investigates legal interpretations of the monarch's power from the twelfth to the seventeenth century. Then, tracing the evolution of defendants' rights, he demonstrates that the origins of due process are not rooted in English common law as is generally assumed. It was not a sturdy Anglo-Saxon, but, most probably, a French jurist of the late thirteenth century who wrote, "A man is innocent until proven guilty." This is the first book to examine in detail the origins of our concept of due process. It also reveals a fascinating paradox: while a theory of individual rights was evolving, so, too, was the concept of the prince's "absolute power." Pennington illuminates this paradox with a clarity that will greatly interest students of political theory as well as legal historians.
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Constitutionalism and Human Rights: America, Poland, and France: A Bicentennial Colloquium at the Miller Center
Rett R. Ludwikowski and Kenneth W. Thompson
This work is the sixth volume in the Miller Center Bicentennial Series on Constitutionalism. The contributors examine in several different essays the historical, political, and ideological connections among the constitutional experiences of France, Poland, and the United States. This study furthers the Miller Center's efforts to examine the United States Constitution and its interaction and interrelationship with other constitutions in the world. Although Poland's constitution was the focus of the book, the approach has been made unique by the fact that the study was not conducted solely through Polish eyes, but rather in relation to the constitutions which, with Poland, share the distinction of being the three oldest constitutions in the world, the French and the U.S. Co-published with the Miller Center of Public Affairs.
