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Gerard V. Bradley

Gerard V. Bradley

Gerard V. Bradley teaches constitutional law at Notre Dame, where (with John Finnis) he directs the Natural Law Institute. His most recent books include Catholic Social Teaching: A Volume of Scholarly Essays (edited with Christian Brugger, published by Cambridge University Press) and Unquiet Americans: United States Catholics and the Common Good (Saint Augustine’s Press).

establishment clause

There and Back Again: The Supreme Court’s Establishment Clause Journey

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We stand at the dawn of a new era in an important realm of constitutional law. As we step into this new dispensation, Agreeing to Disagree will serve well as a road map and guidebook to what comes.
Pope Benedict XVI

The Soul of the Sower

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Joseph Ratzinger looked at reality straight on, without blinders, neither a pessimist nor an optimist; with trepidation but always with Christian hope. He persevered, trusting in the promises of Christ as we must. He did so as almost all of us have to, without benefit of any special grace.

Catholic Schools and Transgender Students

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The lastingness of each person’s reality as male or female is so integral to the faith’s architecture, that to deny it—even to equivocate about it—is to undermine Catholic faith itself. No Catholic institution should risk that effect.
White House

Trump Administration Fights the Establishment Clause Virus, Too

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When the Trump administration’s clarifying guidelines go to court, they not only should be upheld. One hopes, and even dares to expect, that the compelling circumstances of this public benefit program will bring forth a needed clarification of Establishment Clause law, one which finally buries the impetus behind any confusion surrounding the CARES Act and religious eligibility.
Supreme Court

Moral Truth and Constitutional Conservatism

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The Constitution itself directs us to use metaphysical and moral truths that lie beyond it in its interpretation. Indeed, a contemporary judge can be faithful to the Founders only by relying on these truths.
Church

Learning from Integralism

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Although they often have the flavor of thought experiments, the arguments of integralists are nonetheless worth taking very seriously. Their reflections include spot-on diagnoses of many pathologies affecting our political community.
Bathroom

Compelled Sexual Affirmation in the School Bathroom

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The case against compelled affirmation policies needs to be more explicitly and vividly sexualized. The argument against these policies must be rooted in the civil liberties of objecting students and the right not be forced to be the object of another’s sexual gaze. Opening intimate facilities to anyone of the opposite sex imposes psycho-sexual trauma on countless non-consenting youths, and constitutes a form of sexual exploitation.
Jail

Stigmatizing and Prosecuting Pornography

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Unless adults are willing to make dramatic changes to their own moral and legal rules about pornography, we shall keep playing what amounts to game of Russian roulette with the formation of our children when it comes to one of the most precious parts of their lives.

Sexual Identity Politics and Religious Freedom in a Secular Age

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For the first time in American history, it has become respectable to publicly oppose religious liberty and its supreme value in our polity. This unprecedented turn is ominous. It will not only diminish our constitutional law. It will remap our common life, for religious liberty has always been a linchpin of our political culture.

Learning to Live with Same-Sex Marriage?

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The city of Philadelphia is targeting Catholic Social Services for its policy, based on religious beliefs about marriage, of not placing foster children with same-sex couples.

Notre Dame Swallows the Pill

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The University has announced it is to be the sole funder, unaccompanied proprietor, and director of distribution of what it has solemnly declared for years to be an immoral service. But the Holy Spirit is not a consequentialist. God does not want us to weigh up pros and cons of adhering to the moral truth. And the greatest respect we can show others is to bear faithful witness to the truth.

Religious Liberty and the Common Good

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To detach religious liberty from truth is to decapitate it.

Common Core Catastrophe

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It is time to refocus President Trump’s attention upon Common Core and persuade him to ignite a national movement to roll it back. Catholic education, in particular, is undermined by adopting these national standards.

The Future of Pro-Life Legislation and Litigation

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In her landmark 1971 paper, Judith Jarvis Thomson tried to defend abortion by appeal to norms of justification consistently applicable in a range of other cases. By contrast, the courts in and after Roe and Casey have treated the right to abortion as an unquestionable legal principle. This inverted approach is doomed to fail as it continues to reveal the anomalous character of abortion rights.

President Obama’s Sex-Driven War on Science

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President Obama has sacrificed the well-being of our nation’s youth on the altar of ideology.

For Christian Judges, Is Compromising Religious Beliefs “The Price of Citizenship”?

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In our emerging legal climate, Christians are to be admired for their dedication to moral principle, and they are welcome to act in accordance with it at home and at church. But once they venture into public, our new legal overlords tell us, they must act according to a different set of norms.
Public Discourse

The Implications of Extending Marriage Benefits to Same-Sex Couples

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It is morally indefensible for Catholic institutions to recognize and incentivize same-sex marriages by extending marriage benefits to employees who declare themselves legally married to a person of the same sex.
Public Discourse

Religious Liberty at a Crossroads?

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US religious liberty law is not perfect, but it still deserves our support. Religious exemptions witness to the value of religion as a transcendent good. And nothing in the Supreme Court cases requesting religious liberty exemptions for Muslim citizens undermines that effort.
Public Discourse

The Supreme Court on Prayer

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Justice Kennedy’s opinion in Greece v. Galloway is the Court’s best piece of Establishment Clause work in decades—and a happy omen for religious liberty in our country.
Public Discourse

The Family Matrix

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The lifelong, unbreakable chords of fealty and identity that family members possess for each other depend upon the biological matrix created by the marital union of man and woman.
Public Discourse

The Pro-Life Movement, Forty-One Years After Roe

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The pro-life movement has won a great battle by convincing the American public that an unborn child is a person. But that is not enough. Now, we must make an ethical argument against the horrific injustice of abortion.
Public Discourse

The State Marriage Defense Act

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The age in which all states were united in understanding marriage as the exclusive union of man and woman for life has passed away. Now, new legislation seeks to protect the right of each state to define marriage for those who reside within its borders.
Public Discourse

Praying in Greece

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Judicial precedent, historical awareness, and the very nature of prayer all make it clear: legislators have the right to begin their assemblies with a prayer.
Public Discourse

Faith and (Dorm) Life

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Faith-based dorms at secular universities offer a positive alternative to the indoctrination and debasement present on many campuses.
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