Tom Berg writes in his very interesting post: Moreover, although there are plenty of political issues on which official Catholic teaching tends to lean more to the left than to the right -- for example, active government involvement in poverty and welfare programs -- many of these are not constitutional issues that are really "in play." Tom is certainly right if "in play" means the active consideration of Frank Michelman's "Protecting the Poor Through the 14th Amendment." But, of course, these issues are "in play" in lots and lots of statutory interpretation, and one can and should interpret statutes against notions of background constitutional values. Even if one believes that the courts should not be in the affirmative rights game for institutional reasons, that does not entail that congressional statutes shouldn't be generously construed with regard to protecting the poor. sandy
<<winmail.dat>>
_______________________________________________ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw
Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
