Saturday, April 19, 2008 - Posts
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sponsorship
There is a paradox at the heart of Senator Obama's presidential campaign. Senator Obama is campaigning one way -- as a figure who transcends the old, tired politics of division -- and has voted almost entirely the other -- as reliable, down the line member of his party. This anomaly has been noted by the New York Times and one can expect that it will be regularly pointed out by Senator McCain. Asked to explain, Candidate Obama -- with some plausibility -- has pointed out that many of the votes he has been asked to cast in the U.S. Senate are deliberately ideological, aimed more at political statement than practical resolution.
Fair enough, but perhaps now that the Senator's campaign has run somewhat aground thanks to a "bitter" verbal misstep and the heckling of George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson, it might be wise, especially on the eve of the Pennsylvania primary, for the prospective President Obama to supply a good-faith illustration of how he might achieve common ground and build bridges over the religious and cultural divides of the past.
There is no better topic for doing this than abortion. This is a topic of profound religious and philosophical divide, properly called by my friend Laurence Tribe as a "clash of absolutes."
For the last several days the leader of the Catholic Church has extolled his flock in America and all Americans "to set aside all division" to work for a conception of freedom built upon the truth of the human person. The Jewish community in America is once again keeping Passover commemorating the great Exodus of the Israelites from slavery to freedom. In the arc of these historic and traditional Judaic Christian moments both celebrating authentic freedom could there possibly be a better time for Senator Obama to demonstrate a tangible manifestation of the unity of purpose upon which he has been standing throughout the campaign?
How?
By embracing a proposal equivalent to what the leaders of his own counsel of advisors have already endorsed: the so-called 95-10 legislation. This idea satisfies neither side of an absolutist clash completely - how could it and still be common ground? - yet it strives for a 95% reduction in abortion over 10 years, not by legal mandate that would contradict the Senator's belief that this decision must remain that of the mother, but instead by ensuring that no woman faces such decision without having already had the benefit of responsible information about abstinence and contraception. In the event of a pregnancy, the proposal would supply objective information about fetal development, the proper guidance of a parent if the prospective mother is a minor, and the public's assurance of necessary economic support to carry the pregnancy to term, and if it be the mother's informed choice, the adoption of her child.
No doubt the Senator will want to put his own distinctive mark on such legislation, but for now, it is the general endorsement of the idea that is important -- since it conveys what many in the Keystone State and beyond truly wish to believe; namely, that behind the eloquence of leadership is a person prepared to lead - yes -- even before "day one."
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sponsorship
shows that entrusting exclusively to individual States, with their laws and institutions, the final responsibility to meet the aspirations of persons, communities and entire peoples, can sometimes have consequences that exclude the possibility of a social order respectful of the dignity and the rights of the person.
Benedict looked, rather, to transnational and international institutions as vehicles to promote human dignity, using a "common language" and not "a relativistic conception." For the pope religion is one such transnational vehicle, of course; "relativist" is, after all, an antonym of "catholic," itself a a synonym of "universal." Yet he devoted much of his address to a vehicle typically expressed on the temporal plane: human rights, the promotion of which Benedict called
the most effective strategy for eliminating inequalities between countries and social groups, and for increasing security.
Even as he found traces of human rights in the centuries-old writings of Catholic scholars like
Augustine and
de Vitoria, the pope found its contemporary source in a 20th C. secular instrument, the 1948
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In tacit reprimand of those who would privilege civil and political rights over economic, social, and cultural rights -- or vice versa -- Benedict reaffirmed the 60-year-old decision to intertwine those rights:
[E]fforts need to be redoubled in the face of pressure to reinterpret the foundations of the Declaration and to compromise its inner unity so as to facilitate a move away from the protection of human dignity towards the satisfaction of simple interests, often particular interests. The Declaration was adopted as a 'common standard of achievement' (Preamble) and cannot be applied piecemeal, according to trends or
selective choices that merely run the risk of contradicting the unity of the human person and thus the indivisibility of human rights.
Perhaps most notable was the pope's embrace of "
responsibility to protect," the international law concept that each nation-state has the primary duty to protect persons within its jurisdiction and control, but if it does not do so, the international community as a whole has a duty to protect those persons against, as the pope put it, "grave and sustained violations of human rights, as well as from the consequences of humanitarian crises, whether natural or man-made." Use of means permitted by the the law of the
U.N. Charter is not "an unwarranted imposition or a limitation of sovereignty," the pope maintained, for "it is indifference or failure to intervene that do the real damage."
Some approach the "responsibility to protect" with skepticism, wondering whether the energy spent on pushing a new concept with a catchy acronym --
R2P -- might be better spent on working to strengthen the U.N. Security Council and other pre-existing mechanism that in the end would have to effect any such intervention.
I'm among those skeptics,
so too José Alvarez, Columbia law professor and immediate past president of the American Society of International Law. Despite disagreement on means, however, we all agree on the ultimate goal, greater enforcement of human rights. And so yesterday's strong statement in support of that objective, from one of the globe's premier norm-shapers, is welcome.
(cross-posted at IntLawGrrls blog)