Beattie Publishes Article on Liberalism and Religious Liberty

January 21, 2005

James R. Beattie Jr., professor of law at Capital University Law School, has published Taking Liberalism and Religious Liberty Seriously: Shifting Our Notion of Toleration From Locke to Mill, 43 The Catholic Lawyer 367 (2004). The Catholic Lawyer, published by St. John’s Law Review, is a journal that focuses on legal issues having ethical, canonical, or theological implications.

“The article discusses the uneasy alliance between our national commitment to liberalism and our equally fundamental commitment to religious liberty,” said Beattie. “It suggests that greater clarity and consistency can be brought to both commitments, as well as to the Supreme Court’s current Religion Clauses jurisprudence, by shifting our brand of liberalism from John Locke to John Stuart Mill.”

In the article, Beattie contends this shift provides a more solid answer to the question of when to stop “tolerating the intolerant.” Locke’s answer would be to do so when the government chooses. Mill’s answer would be to stop tolerating the intolerant when there is imminent harm to others. Additionally, using Mill’s brand of liberalism would require moving from a practice of protecting religious belief, but not religious practice, to a governmental presumption against regulating religious belief and lifestyle.

Beattie joined the Capital University law faculty in 2001. He was previously a litigation associate for Greenberg Traurig, P.A. in Miami and with Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett in New York. Professor Beattie taught philosophy at Tulane University and Xavier University in New Orleans. Upon graduation from Vanderbilt University Law School, where he was senior articles editor for the Vanderbilt Law Review, Professor Beattie served as a judicial clerk for Chief Judge Gerald Bard Tjoflat of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

Winner of the 2002 Teacher of the Year Award from the Association of American Law Schools, Beattie teaches Constitutional Law, seminars in Law and Religion, Modern Legal Philosophy and Jurisprudence. He is the faculty advisor to the Capital University Law Review and is currently pursuing his J.S.D. through Columbia University Law School.