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Pilgrim Law: Overcoming False Consciousness through the Witness of London's Economic Migrants

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2015

Vincent D. Rougeau
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Extract

It is both an honor and a pleasure to be asked to participate in this festschrift for my friend and colleague, Robert E. Rodes, Jr. Since I joined the Notre Dame Law School faculty in 1998, Bob has been an inspiration to me in so many different ways, and in my opinion, he exemplifies the best tradition of an American man of letters. It is a rare American law school that can boast a faculty member whose interests range from medieval French and English law to modern civil procedure, legal ethics, poverty law and liberation theology. But we at Notre Dame have all this in Bob, and it is through these wide-ranging interests that I found not only intellectual common ground with him, but also a mentor and a friend.

It just so happens that Bob and I received our undergraduate and law degrees from the same institutions, Brown University and Harvard Law School. Although our experiences at both places were separated by almost forty years, I like to think that our shared educational provenance links us in a special way. In addition, for the last five years or so, we have belonged to the same parish and, more often than not, we attend the same mass. This has offered our professional relationship the wonderful counterpoise of the fellowship of our parish community, and it has given me and my wife, Robin, a chance to spend more time with Bob's delightful wife Jeanne, to whom he has been married over fifty years.

Type
Robert E. Rodes, Jr. Tribute
Information
Journal of Law and Religion , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , 2007 , pp. 489 - 501
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University 2007

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References

1. Rodes, Robert, Pilgrim Law (U. Notre Dame Press 1998)Google Scholar.

2. Robert Rodes rather argues:

We can debate a lot of economic data but not income inequality. Every serious study shows that the US income gap has become a chasm. Over the past 30 years, the share of income going to the highest earning Americans has risen steadily to levels not seen since shortly before the Great Depression.

Rattner, Steven, The Rich Get (Much) Richer, Bus. Week 90 (08 8, 2005)Google Scholar. For a perspective on the issue that attributes the phenomenon to skill-based technological change, see Steelman, Aaron & Weinburg, John, What's Driving Wage Inequality?, F. Reserve Bank of Richmond, Econ. Q. 1 (Summer 2005)Google Scholar.

3. It is noteworthy that during the same period, similar rises in income inequality to those in the United States have been observed in the United Kingdom, where the American economic model has been embraced with some enthusiasm, whereas there has been almost no increase in income inequality in the peer wealthy economies of continental Europe, where there has been some attempt to maintain the idea of a “social market.” Steelman & Weinburg, id. at 4.

4. Snakes and Ladders, Economist 52 (05 27, 2006)Google ScholarPubMed.

5. Rodes, supra n. 1, at 9-10.

6. In 2006, both Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs announced near-record profits—the second best results ever in the case of Lehman Brothers. See Craig, Susanne, Moving the Market: Lehman Reports 47% Surge in Profit, Wall St. J. C3 (06 13, 2006)Google Scholar; Craig, Susanne, Goldman's Earnings Surge but Shares Drop 4%, Wall St. J. C4 (06 14, 2006)Google Scholar.

7. See Schroeder, Michael & Hwang, Susan, Sweeping New Bankruptcy Law to Make Life Hard for Debtors, Wall St. J. A1 (04 6, 2005)Google Scholar; see also Dash, Eric, Size of Bankruptcy Bubble Surprises Banks, N.Y. Times C1 (10 25, 2005)Google Scholar.

8. Warren, Elizabeth, What is a Women's Issue? Bankruptcy, Commercial Law, and Other Gender-Neutral Topics, 25 Harv. Women's L.J. 19, 22 (2002)Google Scholar.

9. Id. at 25.

10. Id. at 26.

11. Calavita, Kitty, Immigrants at the Margins: Law, Race, and Exclusion in Southern Europe 160–161 (Cambridge U. Press 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12. Rodes, supra n. 1, at 56.

13. Steelman & Weinberg, supra n. 2, at 4.

14. See e.g. Not Criminal, Just Hopeful, Economist 33–34 (04 15, 2006)Google ScholarPubMed. It is typical for immigrants to be criminalized in societies that perceive an economic, cultural, and racial threat in foreign newcomers. For a discussion of the criminal and racial “otherness” of recent immigrants in Spain and Italy, and the phenomenon's important link to politics, see Calavita, supra n. at 125-156.

15. Rodes, supra n. 1, at 85-86.

16. Dunham, Richard, Immigration Reform: Why Business Could Get Burned, Bus. Week 41 (04 10, 2006)Google Scholar; O'Sullivan, John, The GOP's Immigration Problem: Will the elites get a clue?Natl. Rev. 34–37 (09 12, 2005)Google Scholar.

17. Pfaff, William, Clash of Cultures: Globalization and the March of Western Values, Commonweal 13, 15 (06 16, 2006)Google Scholar.

18. Wilby, Peter, All You Need to Succeed in Our Meritocracy is Privilege, Guardian 30 (06 17, 2006)Google Scholar.

19. Rodes, supra n. 1, at 89.

20. Gutierrez, Gustavo, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation xxv (SisterInda, Caridad & Eggleston, John ed. & trans., rev. ed., Orbis Books 1988)Google Scholar (originally published 1973).

21. Rodes, supra n. 1, at 99.

22. Id. at 137.

23. Id. at 104.

24. London Citizens Workers Association, http://www.livingwage.org.uk/campaign.html (accessed Mar. 26, 2007).

25. Alinsky's model was identified by Bob in Pilgrim Law as “sporadically successful,” but not capable of providing the kind of complete institutionalization of pilgrim law that Bob was seeking. Rodes, supra n. 1, at 107.

26. U.S. Bishop's Conference, Economic Justice for All ¶ 71 (1986) (available at http://www.osjspm.org/economic_justice_for_all.aspx).

27. Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church 80 (2005) (available at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/justpeace/documents/re_pc_justpeace_doc_20060526_compendio-dott-soc_en.html)Google Scholar.

28. Lévinas, Emmanuel, Alterity and Transcendence 87–88 (Colum. U. Press 1999)Google Scholar.

29. Pope John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Centesimus Annus 57-58 (1991) (available at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_01051991_cetesimus-annus_en.html).