DEFENSE OF THE SOVEREIGN PERSONALITY OF THE HOLY SEE

This juridico-philosophical argument is a response to the juridical argument against the sovereignty of the Holy See and for its status as an “instrumentality” of the State of Vatican City, both objectively and specifically for the purpose of civil suits in American courts against the Holy See in matters of clerical sexual abuse.

1.     The State of Vatican City (SCV) was created by a bilateral treaty (Lateran Pacts) between the Kingdom of Italy and the Holy See, both acting as sovereign entities. Therefore, the Holy See is juridically prior to the SCV as a sovereign entity with concurrent sovereign personality equivalent to states under international law and by that fact constitutes it as a sui generis sovereign state.

2.     Therefore the Holy See cannot be an instrumentality of the SCV, since an instrument which is created by a given entity cannot be temporally prior to such entity, for the created cannot have existed before the creator.

3.     But the Holy See existed before the creation of the SCV and existed independent of it until 1929.

4.     Therefore the SCV was created as an instrumentality of the Holy See, in order to protect the sovereign personality of the Holy See, in absolute independence of the Pope, and the salvific mission of the Catholic Church against temporal sovereigns.

5.     Therefore suits against the Holy See as instrumentality of the SCV are absurd and should not be allowed.

6.     It also follows that the Holy See is the only sovereign personality of “The Vatican” entity, and the SCV is an instrumentality to ensure the temporal sovereignty of the Holy See (historical evidence of this being the “States of the Church” themselves were created in the 700s as a protection for the Church and the Papacy against temporal sovereigns; this has always been the function of the terratoriality of the Holy See and was the reason why the Roman Question had to be resolved with a grant of sovereign terratoriality).

 

Written 16 August 2013, 7:24 am.

This argument is written in response to the argument set forth by James Fantau in Rethinking the Soverign Status of the Holy See: Towards a Greater Equality of States and Greater Protection of Citizens in United States Courts, 19 Card. J. Int'l & Comp. L. 487 (2011).

Accessed in 2013 @ http://www.cjicl.com/uploads/2/9/5/9/2959791/cjicl_19.2_fantau_note.pdf

 

Citizens United and the Justice of Juridic Personality

Corporations are persons under the US Constitution according to the rulings of its authentic interpreter, the US Supreme Court.

Many have deplored what they see as a new development in the Citizens United decision; they object to the legal fiction of juridic personality and consider it improper to impart personhood to a corporation.

While their objection should be debated, the notion that juridic personality is a novel doctrine of SCOTUS alone is historically unfounded; Canon Law and the continental Civil Law it influenced have had the doctrine of juridic personality for centuries. While its incorporation into American Common Law is less explicitly in terms of "personality", both law and the courts have recognized corporate entities as having separate legal status (juridic personality) from those human persons (physical/natural personality) constituting the corporate whole. Hence corporations pay taxes, can be held accountable for crimes, and can exercise free speech wholly apart from those physical persons directing the corporation.

To the objection of impropriety in attributing personality to juridically-constituted corporate entities: If we are to strip corporations of their personhood, in justice we must thereby strip them of their pecuniary obligations under tax law. SCOTUS has already incorporated corporations under the Bill of Rights, and corporations have corresponding duties, such as paying taxes. For every duty, there is a right (cf. J. Koterski). Consequently, for the duty of paying taxes we acknowledge the right of free speech. If the right is suppressed, in justice the duty must be removed. The abrogation of the corporate tax is something I doubt anyone would seriously consider.