Spirit in Action

Law & Making Peace with the Earth

While there are many roots to the global environmental crisis we face, some of the most important emerge from our concepts of ownership, especially of land. Howard Vogel is an emeritus professor of law at Hamline University, having taught constitutional law, restorative justice, international human rights, and a seminar in ethics after having done extensive public interest litigation in environmental law.

Duration:: 55m
Broadcast on:: 26 Jul 2015
Audio Format:: other

[music] Let us sing this song for the healing of the world That we may hear as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing [music] Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpes Me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world That we may dream as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along I think today's Spirit in Action guest is going to get you thinking very deeply about the very roots in our culture Of the environmental crisis, which is so obvious to so many of us Howard Vogel spent some decades teaching law and ethics and related subjects at Hamline University in the Twin Cities Not only as a lawyer, but also with the degree that he obtained from the Twin Cities, united theological seminary And he continues to wrestle with a number of legal, ethical, and moral questions and issues Most notably our relationship to the land and to the earth Drawing insights and wisdom widely, including from Native ways of thinking about ownership Howard has deeply valuable lessons in a way forward for our planet You'll have to listen online at nordinspiritradio.org For some really valuable bonus excerpts not included in this broadcast Really, you won't want to miss them But right now, we go to the Twin Cities of Minnesota to speak with Howard Vogel Howard, thank you so much for joining me for Spirit in Action Pleasure to be here I understand you're an emeritus professor How recently did you retire from Hamline? I retired in January of 2012, but I still occasionally teach a course And talk to me a little bit about your background in law Because I find it very interesting that you have your various degrees related to law But then you go to United Theological Seminary in Twin Cities So there's something about law that I think maybe is not the traditional way that most people approach it So talk about your history with law How did you get into that and how does this end up dovetailing with your theological degree? Well, I'm one of those people that sometimes refer to as a child of the war in court That's referring to Earl Warren, the chief justice And the war in court is the court who in the 50s issued some remarkable decisions Most notable, perhaps, is Brown versus the board, the school desegregation case And I was just about ready to go into high school then And what the court was doing was of great interest to those of us that were interested in government and politics As a child of the war in court, quote unquote, it means that I have the idea That some really positive things couldn't be accomplished through the law working through the courts I don't have that view as strongly today as I did then But I think that was one of the reasons that I went to law school Because it seemed to me that if you worked in law, you could have worked for justice That's pretty simple, but I think that was one of my main motivations As I got into it, it was during the height of the Vietnam War And I started participating as a member of a speaker's bureau that Minnesota clergy and lady concerned had So very often on Sundays, I would be out at a local Christian church speaking about the Vietnam War From the standpoint of thinking about it as a problem that raised serious moral questions for our society During that time, I got very interested in and was moved by the people who had been draft resistors Some of whom wound up spending time in prison because they were conscientious objectors But they really didn't need the legal requirements for securing conscientious objector status And prior to that time, between college years and law school years, I had actually been in the military And was in the United States Navy and wound up being on a couple of high-level admiral staffs First in the Mediterranean and then in the Middle East And the time I spent in the Middle East in '66 and '67 was the time of the war between Israel and Egypt and other Arab countries So I saw some of that first hand at least not being present in the middle of the violence going on But I knew a lot about it because I was working for the on-site American commander who was floating around In the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf I had a lot of questions in my mind as a graduate of an international relations program About what was really going on in the world And I thought I was going to go into the diplomatic service But after meeting people that were lifetime diplomatic core employees of the United States And how disillusioned they were with their own work I was kind of left with no place to go So I went back home after I got out of the Navy and thought "Well, I need to work for justice" and I thought back to my high school years in the war in court Or the flight went to law school After I got out of law school and I was doing this Sunday morning speaking about the Vietnam War And running into these people who had been draft resistors or some conscientious objectors I got really interested in the reasons that they had for objecting And it seems to me that those were religious or spiritually based reasons And my curiosity then took me, while I was just barely starting legal practice It took me to a united theological seminary to study how people made these kinds of decisions from their religious background I wound up over a number of years, they are pursuing a master of arts in religious studies And ultimately wrote a thesis on the way in which people reach these decisions to disobey the law It was a matter of civil disobedience So that led me to think through all that theologically The interesting thing is that later when I went into teaching After having done a lot of work in environmental law As I came to understand that both the legal tradition and the various religious traditions Share something in common And what they share in common is that they involve people who gather with each other Around a significant and important text for the purpose of engaging in conversation About the meaning of that text in their shared lives So a religious community for example, if it's Christian, would gather around the Christian Bible If it's a Jewish, would gather around the Hebrew scriptures An Islamic community would gather around the Quran, so forth And people in the legal community gathered around the Constitution, for example Other aspects of the law, the written documents And in both cases they were based the same challenge And that is how to interpret the text for the application of what it seemed to be teaching in their own lives So that's kind of where the two things come together for me There's about 20 points along the way that I have questions about What we're going to head to is some views about the ecological crisis affecting the world And some of your work you mentioned was on environmental matters We'll come back to that as well One of the questions that comes to mind for me Is how much you are concerned and how much the law is concerned about justice Because I'm pretty sure there's a lot of lawyers out there who just say I can't be bothered with justice issues That's between us and God or some higher realm of thinking It's above my pay grade I'm concerned about the law And here's what it says, what it doesn't say It's not my prerogative to decide whether it's justice or not It sounds to me, Howard, like you went into law because you wanted to pursue justice Is that a typical feeling? Is that where you're still at? That certainly is the reason that I did that's where I'm still at My own experience teaching thousands of students is that many of them come to law school Because they have a deep desire to serve the common good As they get socialized into the knowledge and patterns of behavior That lawyers take on necessarily to function in a legal system They oftentimes find it more and more difficult to do that So I would say that this is the reason why there is, for many lawyers, a great sadness In the work that they do because it's oftentimes the case for many lawyers that they feel That they're really not doing much more than operating as a hired gun With their very costly skills, I mean costly skills, what I mean by that is Their skills, which they have secured at a great cost of themselves Being sold to the highest bidder Which means that they become nothing more than an instrument of their client's will Now, it has to be said that one of the great values One of the great benefits of the common law legal system And the Constitution embraces this idea as well Is that every person is entitled to their day in court So one of the promises that the legal system has in a society that's ruled by law And is governed under the rule of law Is that you will receive individualized justice You are permitted to have your say in court And your case will be considered on its own merits So that you will be dealt with directly And that's a very positive thing But on the other hand, the access to that system Is not necessarily available to all on an equal basis Which can be very problematic You also said Howard, that when you went to United Theological Seminary Part of what led you there, and these are my words correct me if I'm wrong What led you there was trying to look at the roots of how people make decisions about conscience's objection In other words, how people make their decisions with respect to justice and the law I think that's part of my question So were you raised with a tradition where you had your own thinking about that? Is this something that was new for you looking at this? Where did that come from? You're right about your characterization of me there And where I think that came from is that as a child I went to a parochial grade school A very conservative German Lutheran grade school Wouldn't be, it would be something that would be familiar to many of your listeners I would suspect in Wisconsin I was raised in southern Minnesota One of the things that was clear to me is that on some matters We had obligations to act in life in a way that was congruent with However we understood the will of God So that raises the question of any time you're facing a decision Whether or not this is something that's just that you're participating in Or considering pursuing because of your own will Or whether it's something that comports with I suppose what we could call the higher law of God That's probably where my concern about the ethics of governmental decision making began And of course it spread out to thinking about the law in particular So that's the origin of it Which means that when I was at the seminary doing my graduate work At the same time that I was practicing law I not only was brought up short in having to rethink my understanding of the law But I also was engaged in rethinking my whole religious experience in spiritual practice and so forth So both of them were subject to the same kind of questioning Tell me a little bit about the kind of court cases that you participated in as a lawyer The cases that I took for the few years that I practiced by myself I went into teaching involved, for example, the big pollution case up on Lake Superior I wasn't the chief lawyer on that, the states of Minnesota was kind of from Michigan and the United States government sued two steel companies, Armco and Republic Steel About the pollution that was the result of iron ore tailings Being discharged into the lake at Silver Bay, Minnesota on the North Shore And I represented the environmental intervener So I was involved in that case but the other governmental parties were the chief litigants in that But that was one that I was involved in, that went on for eight or nine months I also got involved in some cases under the National Environmental Policy Act Which was passed by Congress near the time of the Earth Day We didn't think it amounted to much because it seemed like it only said that government had to consider A few things concerning the environment before they went forward with their decisions And then a decision was issued by a circuit court of appeals on the east coast That said, well, these requirements really mean something There are teeth in this National Environmental Policy Act NEPA usually just referred to as NEPA And you have to prepare an environmental impact statement in which you consider the actual effects And all the alternatives there might be to mitigate the effects on the environment And with that you could get governmental decision makers to look more closely at the results I was involved in a number of those kinds of cases Including one that involved the licensing of a nuclear power plant I was particularly concerned about nuclear power after I read some of the studies That demonstrated that low-level exposure to radiation could be a serious problem for infant mortality Difficult to see that until you do a careful statistical analysis And having grown up in the time which we were worried about atomic bombs going off And doing the old duck and cover routine in grade school I'd always been wary of nuclear weapons But now I came to see nuclear power having another very sobering side to it Which is the introduction of low-level amounts into the environment as being a possible danger So that led me into these nuclear power cases Those were the kinds of things that I got involved in As well as some things that just involved discharges into flowing streams, for example Well we're going to dive into that pretty deeply right now folks But first I want to remind you you're listening to Spirit in Action This is a Nordenspirit radio production on the web at northernspiritradio.org That's like organic instead of commercial Nordenspiritradio.org On that site you'll find 10 years of our programs for your free listening and download We're also syndicated across the country right now It stands at 23 stations are carrying our programs from coast to coast Also on our site you can find a place to post comments You can see other people's comments Please add yours when you come We value two-way communication There's also a place to support Nordenspirit radio This is full-time work and it's by your support that it's paid for But even more important than supporting Nordenspirit radio I ask that you support your local community radio station Community radios offer you a slice of news And of music that you get nowhere else in American airwaves We need open portals of information And community radio stations do that So please start by supporting them before you go elsewhere Again our guest today is Howard Vogel He's an emeritus professor from Hamline University in the Twin Cities Minnesota In addition to his JD from the University of Minnesota He's got his masters from United Theological Seminary in the Twin Cities So he brings a perspective of theology, of ethics, of morals To the area of law that isn't always the focus that a lawyer would bring So I especially appreciate that about you Howard And of course I really like to the presentation that you gave at Northern Yearly meeting This past session, the end of May And that's what occasioned by bringing you on the program Let's get into that right now You advance some ideas that I think are probably seen as revolutionary By the current point of view of many people in this country Has to do with ownership and how we connect with the land Once you start us off on the ideas that lead you up to that important concept About how we deal with the land I'd be happy to do that Land is really important to human beings We walk on the land, we really exist in an ocean of air And we swim in that ocean so to speak as we walk across the land We're not water creatures, we're air creatures who are landed I think that's why land is really really important to people There's a certain way in which if you have a place that you're able to call home Let's say there's a sense of security that comes over a person It's a very deep and understandable thing I may not have talked about this very much in that presentation we're talking about But I think we have to acknowledge that this desire to acquire land that humans have Is rooted in a need for a certain amount of security that is tied to the land What it can lead us to is to become owners of ever increasingly large tracts of land That lead us to come to understand that land is some kind of an object that exists for our benefit That we can do things to it And we can lose sight of the way in which we are really deeply interconnected and interdependent on the land The land is dependent upon us and we're dependent upon the land And if we're not careful about that we can undermine the ability of the land to support us in the way that we need support So let's go of concern to me of the land which this idea of owning the planet has become a dominant principle It seems to me or dominate an idea inside of the evolution of property law One of the chief characteristics of property law is the idea of possession And this is an idea that goes way back before the origin of the common law in England To ancient Roman times and perhaps even further And I think that idea of possession is somehow rooted in human need for security on the land But the idea of possession has come to be understood at least As being able to secure the land in a way for the benefit of myself to exclude you and all others Let me illustrate how deeply this is embedded in our psyche If I can just take you back to your childhood You must have had the experience of being out on the playground when someone finds something Perhaps it's a coin or a shiny marble or what have you And the person grabs it and says it's mine and somebody else contest that Oh no, I thought first that the person holding this little solid object in their hand says Finders keepers, losers, weepers That's actually a core principle of what's called the law of finders If you find things you can keep them Let's suppose that an argument breaks up between those children And the children, the child who is owning it says possession is nine points of the law That common phrase expresses this idea of possession So these are things that already children pick up from the culture into which they are born It's part of our background and it reflects that deep importance of the idea of possession But that's not the only idea that's associated with the land Land and property law is very malleable Which means that you can't just do anything on your land If you create a public nuisance on your land your neighbors can get together and get the benefit of the law To stop you from doing that Because you can't wreck the neighborhood for people Now that doesn't happen very often, but it's an example of the fact that Even land which is possessed by you or by me to the exclusion of all others Is subject to regulation so that it doesn't be used to injure other people Now the question that we face today in the 21st century with a looming ecological crisis Is whether we can drive that notion deeper so that we can ask people That our landowners to act as stewards of that land So that the basic support for life that land provides can be maintained It's not just a matter of not burning tires on the back lot that you own Which messes up the sky and follows the odor in the neighborhood But it's about people appropriating the land in a way that undermines its ability To provide the kind of support that we need since we are deeply related to the land Those are the kinds of things that are of concern to me at this point We're really facing a cultural problem I don't think we can go to court or the legislature very easily and change this But the idea that the land that we own can be used in whichever way we want Is one that has gotten us into very very great troubles Especially with the rise of the industrial age in the last 150 years or so One of the things that strikes me today is that everybody now says Oh of course we're interconnected and it's because of the spread of the internet Back when the first Earth Day came about in 1969 it was difficult to get people to even talk about the idea that we were interconnected Today it's difficult to get people to take seriously the depth at which we are interconnected It's simply say I know we're connected, we're all connected by the internet We know what's going on 24/7 in every country in the world So what's at stake today is coming to an understanding that the depth of our interconnection goes All the way down deep into the Earth and deep into our bodies I mean each of us actually depends upon helpful bacteria that reside in our intestinal tract for our digestive process We don't think about that but it's a sign of our interdependence on other organisms And it might be good for us to start to think of the entire planet as an organism itself A planet that has its own life which includes what we think of as biological life But also the ongoing processes that you can see in the world of rocks and plant life beyond just animal life It seems to me that one of the things you'd advocate for is good stewardship I know that theologically there's some dissension between what the original idea of people are Is it all about people? Are we at the center of things? And in Genesis is it about God giving us dominion or is it stewardship? I guess I think I know where you come down on that side of that How does that reflect it in law? Well that's a very good way to put it because you can read that Genesis account in a number of different ways And I'm not talking about taking the Genesis account and twisting it in a particular way But if you go back to the ancient history of Israel I think there's a much stronger understanding that the covenant which existed between Israel and God included the land When you look at the land which covenantal theology so-called is developed in the early years of the colonies in the United States The land is just kind of dropped out of it so that covenantal theology becomes very important in terms of the relations between people But in some way the land gets dropped out of it and the real question is Why was the land dropped out because that leads to an understanding of dominion is meaning we can do whatever we want And once you have that cultural background because law tends to reflect the culture It's no surprise that you find it in law It's also true of course that law can have an impact on culture I mean an interesting question will be you and I won't be around for this But in a hundred years from now someone will surely ask whether or not the decision of the South Carolina legislature to take down the Confederate battle flag Had a measurable impact on race relations in the United States And if race relations aren't better the answer will be easy Well it didn't have any impact But if race relations are better the difficult question will be In what way if at all did that contribute to it? When you think about the Brown versus the Board of Education decision Schools in some places are more racially segregated than they were at the time that Brown was decided Well then you could say that Brown has failed On the other hand it's held out certain promises that have been very helpful To try to deal with the racial conflict that is so ongoing in our society So it's very difficult to always identify the way in which law might be a reflection of the culture As opposed to something that can be used to change that culture slightly in a new direction And as a Warren Court kid, I think my early understanding was a little law and a prime way in which you can change the course of the culture At this point in my life I'm not sure that's true so I'm much more interested in where people are coming from I suppose you could say spiritually, religiously, theologically however you want to put that Because the way in which people view the world will have a huge impact on the character of the culture of the society in which they live Well then let's discuss a particular element of that which I think is particularly influential on the environmental well-being of our world And that is the idea of communal rights versus individual rights My sense from having read the Bible in those early chapters It's really much more about an agreement between God, Yahweh, or whatever name was used back then And the community of people, even when it was given to Abraham, it's you and your descendants It's with a group of people as opposed to an individual I've got a deed on this square piece of land I'll give you the land of Canaan, for instance, and so on So I think that's evolved considerably since those times in the Bible And as much as people in the US today, particularly people who consider them Christian, think these are God-given rights of individual ownership How much does that tie in with the whole theological story of the many centuries in between? Well, the place that I would like to enter that discussion That's a huge, huge discussion and a very important one But the place I would like to enter that is the 15th century Which is not to cast off what happened before then But what happened in the 15th century was very important Because it's in the 15th century that Columbus had sailed for ultimately what he had come to own as America And before that happened, there were people who thought that the earth was flat And then along came Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal who sent ships out from Portugal And discovered that they could disappear over the horizon and still come back The earth was not flat And so then they start to discover other lands, the west coast of Africa, for example Opens up a whole new possibility Once it was understood that there was a large world out there with many other lands The western European nations embarked on a race to secure access to those lands Many of times assuming there were vast riches to be found in those places And so what became an issue was how do you maintain peace between the European nations Who are now setting out in the so-called Age of Discovery? How do you maintain peace between those nations as they start making claims to land Based on this idea of possession? The pope, at that time, issued a number of documents which divided the earth into two spheres One sphere was open to the Portuguese and the other sphere was open to the Spanish And if you look at where that line was drawn, you will see that there's one country in South America I think it's Brazil, which Portuguese is the language and the other countries they speak Spanish And that's because that country that Portuguese has spoken is on the Portuguese side of the line that the pope drew Now why did the pope draw that line? The pope drew that line because it set aside parts of the earth for discovery by the Spanish And parts for discovery by the Portuguese And then what happened is the first country that got to the land and maintained a claim upon it Would be said to be the first "discover of the land" Of course, we know now there was nothing to be discovered there People had lived there for eons before the Europeans overcame And eventually this whole doctrine of discovery was a doctrine that was worked out in Europe under a theological sanction To avoid conflict between Western European nations in particular Who are now sending ships all over the place trying to make claims on land And eventually it came into Britain and you have voyages for example of John Cabot up into Canada Who made claims up there for the British crown, so on and so forth That's a highly oversimplified version of it But the doctrine of discovery comes out the 15th century Rooted in this theological sanction by the pope That the countries who first discover land then are entitled to make a claim And how did they make that claim given the fact that they encountered other people in those lands? A document was read to the indigenous people that were encountered in those lands Called the Require Rement Miento Which basically said that people had come to provide government for these people And that they now had to pledge their allegiance to these foreign powers And if they didn't do that their lands could be taken from them and they could be killed So with that you have the marriage of the cross for example in the Christian world And the sword which took place back in the 4th century, time of Constantine Now being used to subjugate other lands and the peoples that were found there That's kind of shorthand version of where the law and the story of Christendom worked together To open up the land's discovery and conquest At the presentation that you gave at Northern Yearly Meeting Session You mentioned something about when you are seeing if a deed is clear There is something tracing it back Could you talk about what it traces back to? Sure, if you're buying a piece of land any place in the United States A lawyer will do a title search And what that means is they get a document that many people probably have seen And they may have it in their safe deposit box or some place in a safe place at home Called an abstract up title to the house that they own And the abstract of title is a record of all the transfers of beads relating to that property Over the years and what you need to do before you buy a piece of property It needs to be checked to make sure that there are no previous claims on that Because the land might have been pledged for a loan that was made That's what happens when you get a mortgage for example Or maybe some other form of encumbrance on the land A lien of some sort because someone has done some work for you And you didn't or done some work for somebody in the past Could have not paid and then the creditor somehow got a lien on the land You look for what are called clouds on title You want to make sure that when you go to the closing For the purchase of your house that you get clear title As you check back through all these previous documents and beads The very first one, the very first one on that abstract Will be something that's either called a grant or a patent And it is given by the United States to the very first owner The question arises how do the United States have the authority to grant Either to sell or to distribute this land to begin with And the United States ability to do that is grounded on the doctrine of discovery Why is that so? It's because once the Revolutionary War was ended And the various peace treaties were done That led to the succession of the Americans to the British claims And ultimately to the French claims and later on to the Louisiana purchase To the Spanish claims What it means is the United States becomes the successor In relationship to the land to all of those European powers So the United States eventually supplants Spain, France, England and the Netherlands And becomes the source of your title to your property So even though the United States didn't come to that land as a discoverer It becomes the successor to it That's the way it works in the real estate world Which means anyone that owns a piece of property in the United States Owns that property because the ownership and the idea of possession is rooted in this 15th century doctrine of discovery idea And you can see it in American law if you read decisions Especially about the Supreme Court And how does that compare to the native way of seeing it? I think you spoke of Dakota, ways of thinking of this particular Well I'm speaking to you from St. Paul, Minnesota, not far from the confluence of the Minnesota River And the Mississippi River And down at that site which is called Badote in Dakota Is the site of one of the stories of origin of the Dakota people That's the place from which they emerged, at least one of the places they emerged So this land here that I'm speaking from Has from time immemorial than the ancestral homeland of the Dakota people There are some Ojibwe or Anishinaabe used to be called Chippewa people living in the northern half of Minnesota But they're relatively recent newcomers The Dakota people would call all of Minnesota and beyond its borders as part of their ancestral homeland The way in which the Dakota people have understood this And this is not my opinion, this is things I've heard from Dakota people speaking about it They speak of this land as a relative It's why they sometimes refer to the land in terms of it being the grandmother The Dakota word for the earth and for mother is the same word, it's the word "ina" So the connection that Dakota people have with Minifota, which is a Dakota word Is one that is of great intimacy and close connection because they are relatives Very intimate connection, which means there's a fierce loyalty to the land on the part of the Dakota Even though they don't take the view that they can own parts of it to the exclusion of all others That my ancestors who came here in the middle of the 19th century would have been heirs to So what you have then when you encounter between the Dakota people, for example in Minnesota With the U.S. governmental representatives In the middle of the 19th century, the treaty table, you have two different understandings of the land That are face to face, the treaty table And these understandings are vastly different They both involve an intimate connection with the land But the nature of that connection is quite different Because on the immigrant settler side, the United States side of the treaty table There is the idea that this is land which can be purchased With the understanding by the people on the United States side That all we need to do is get the Dakota people to agree to sell it to us for a price And then we can possess it to the exclusion of all others And the people who then set up firearms on that can often be heard to be speaking in very poetic terms About their understanding of the land, the back portty and so forth It's a great intimate connection, but it's something that they're intimately connected to as their possession Whereas the Dakota people would have been related to it as a relative I sometimes like to think of it in this way The land for the Dakota possessed them They had a duty and obligation to the land And the land to the immigrant settlers was possessed by them And it's no wonder then that there were many clashes between these two cultures over access to the land But to make this even more problematic Aside from instances of fraud related to some of those treaty negotiations What is of even deeper importance from my point of view Is that the understanding that was brought to the treaty table by the American negotiators That somehow the land could be sold completely violates any sense on the part of at least the Dakota And I think this is true of other indigenous peoples That the land is something that could be sold If you sold the land and you were Dakota In effect you're selling grandmother And to the extent that the understanding of sale of the land Is like casting it away it would be like throwing grandmother out of the house So the negotiating positions were very different And because of the extreme difficulties that the Dakota were facing by the middle of the 19th century They were in a very very weak position to engage in any kind of negotiations For me it raises the question of was there really an agreement at the treaty table If you have these vastly two different understandings of the land What really was exchanged between the two? That Dakota oftentimes shared occupation of land with other peoples They had a vast kinship system that includes all kinds of people and the land Which suggests to me that the idea of selling land as opposed to personal property Is something that just didn't fit into the Dakota worldview As opposed to the worldview for example of the immigrant settlers Many of whom like my ancestors came from a peasant background with tiny little pieces of land in Europe But now we're able to secure land where they could work it through agriculture For other processes of extraction, mining, timber removal and so forth To provide for the benefit of their families So from our point of view today probably you and me as descendants of people from Europe Having immigrated here, our concern as liberals, if that's where we are in the map Is likely to be in terms of climate change or environmental despoilation of various sorts There's a lot of ways that can happen or maybe destruction of species We might have all of that as our point of view This idea of the land as owning us as you relate to the Dakota point of view Is there any leverage in the legal system, constitutional or otherwise For that point of view to enter in You did mention during your talk back in the end of May about the repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery Is there any legal fulcrum for this to edge its way into our way of thinking? Well that's a very interesting question and I have to say it's a typical American question And I don't mean that in a way that's critical of you, but it's a typical American question Because we've hooked our future in many ways to what we can do through the use of law And what I like to say to people in response to this question is that I don't think it's helpful for us to wait for the courts to solve these problems I don't need to be dodging the question whether there's any leverage What is true is there is within the common law system a notion of a public trust doctrine That is not very well developed Some lawyers are now trying to press this in courts in which they are arguing That the integrity of the land has to be maintained for future generations It's very hard to make a claim in a courtroom on behalf of an unborn future generation Given the promise of individualized justice to people who are living now But that's being attempted The place that I think we need to give our attention to Is to what we might do as citizens in a political society That has a vibrant legislature Or potentially can have a vibrant legislature because they're all kinds of things that we could do To recognize our interconnectedness at this deep level with the land through legislation The other thing I want to say is that oftentimes when I talk about this in terms of rights And the distinction you make between individual rights and communal rights is an important one Under the American Constitution rights are basically understood in highly individualistic terms And one of the problems that results in is that it's very difficult to take into account the earth So to talk about earth's rights if one wants to do that is extremely difficult And I don't think there's much leverage for that On the other hand, it's possible to talk about how we're going to relate to the land as a society By setting up things that would regulate the uses of that land through our legislative bodies And one final point perhaps is this is really not a liberal or a conservative issue From one point of view, a conservative viewpoint would want to try to protect the land So that it's available for our support From another point of view, a conservative point of view might be the land is available for me to do whatever I want with it So the conservatives could be on both sides of this Liberals on the other hand could also be on both sides of this depending upon how they understand the liberal tradition To the extent that the liberal tradition in American politics is focused on the sanctity of the individual To the exclusion of all others can easily leave the land out of it So that liberalism itself can be the source of promoting what I would call a kind of extreme individualism I think in the turn toward the protection of individuals that comes out of classical liberalism It's an important development in our past But to promote that in an extreme way to the exclusion of the understanding that were dependent upon the community of life Will do nothing to protect individual liberty in the long run and ultimately undermine it So I'm not talking about submerging the individual in the community Instead I'm talking about something which is not original to me But some theologians are beginning to speak about that And if that is to understand who we are as individuals as persons in community I put hyphens between those three words Hyphens hyphen in hyphen community and the individual has no experience And no really true understanding of him or herself unless it's understood as a person in community That's ultimately where our identity is given to us It's where we form it and change it as we interact with the communities in which we live The idea of the individual standing free from everyone else That kind of radical libertarian view which you can find on both the left and the right at its extremes Seems can you deny the ecological web of life that we are in? The interdependency that we are involved with in this planet It's really a form of entanglement And that term which others are beginning to use I think expresses The extent to which we are bound up in this with each other And we will only flourish individually when we flourish together There's so much we can go into Howard I do want to grab just a couple more threads to finish up here One is about this repudiation of the doctrine of discovery The way that I understand you to have talked about it before is If we repudiate the doctrine of discovery All land ownership in this country is in some ways up in the air Is that true? No, I don't think the land ownership is up in the air What I do think is important about the possibility and the idea of repudiating the doctrine of discovery At least for people who take the Christian tradition seriously Reputation of the doctrine of discovery is a way to reclaim the ancient heritage of the teachings of Jesus What I mean by that is that it seems to me that the teachings of Jesus have been hijacked by the state in the doctrine of discovery And so if one is to be faithful to the teachings of Jesus Then the doctrine of discovery is something that one ought to repudiate But repudiating it is not going to disrupt titles to land And it isn't going to solve the ecological crises that we face as a result of the land which we relate to the land But it can be an important step toward coming to a new understanding and awareness Of the deep way in which we are embedded with and tangled with the entire planet The challenge is for us to become collaborators in the renewing process of the earth The rights of ownership that we talk about that we dole out as part of our country At one point there were limitations on the rights of property of people with kind of an immediate African heritage So black people were property and therefore their property rights were entailed I guess it was also true for women in general My question is we've certainly enlarged those senses of the rights that individuals have We extended them to people with darker skin and people who have just know why chromosome Is there any sense in which there are rights that exist beyond humans? That is to say are there rights that belong to your cat, your dog, the insects that are in the land The oak trees out there Is there any sense in our law or legal system that there are rights that are not just human rights? Well I think it's very difficult to make that case I know there are serious discussions by some philosophers about animal rights for example But that hasn't been embraced by the court system Rights are usually understood as something that humans hold Which is why I think the whole notion of rights language is problematic But we don't necessarily have to use rights language or humans rights language To talk about the importance of taking trees into account One of the difficulties of course is if you're concerned about the well being of the plant world for example Who is going to speak on behalf of them if you go to court for example? What I think is much more fruitful than trying to expand rights in this particular way Is to think about how we expand our understanding of responsibility next thing which we live It certainly is true that at least in terms of who now qualifies for citizenship and participation as a human being In American Political Society has been constantly spanned over the years To include people who don't own property, to include people of color and to include women That's been an expansion of the franchise that's been going on for a long time The extent to which it's made meaningful of course is still problematic When you look at some of the restrictions on voting that exist here and there are the difficulties in voting But to use rights to try to embrace the larger planet although I understand where the emphasis of that comes from It seems to me that the crisis we face is so immediate that we need to think about other ways in which we relate to the land itself To the planet itself without waiting for the courts or the legislature to adopt the idea of rights That's why I keep coming back to the point that we are facing a cultural crisis here that involves the way in which we view the world Another thing that I'd like to point out, you've referred a number of times to basically Christian point of view, Christian ethics, Christian morals Would this be different from an Islamic point of view, Islamic law in terms of ownership of land or the rights they're connected? Well I can't speak about that but I think that's an excellent idea for you to explore that with someone trained in the Islamic tradition Especially the legal tradition which is fascinating and complex So I can't really speak about that but there are people I'm sure who are not Christians They could be secular, they could be radical secularists, they could be non-pious, they could be atheists, they could be agnostics They could be Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims Who are every much affected by this because of the fact that they're caught up in the way in which land is thought of And titles are transferred which is in part the legacy of the doctrine of discovery that emerged out of what we would call Christendom in the 15th century And then eventually gets taken up in the United States by the Supreme Court as a doctrine that's not necessarily theologically grounded But it gets converted into a kind of non-religious secular doctrine So the presence and power of the doctrine of discovery today in American law has been sure of its religious underpinnings to begin with So the repudiation of it, say by people who are standing in the Christian tradition, would be one way for people who claim that tradition To come to a deeper understanding of that tradition and how it is rooted in the teachings of Jesus What about the recent encyclical by the Pope about climate change? Well it's an extremely important document, I've read it and one must remember that the Pope himself was trained as a scientist I think he was trained as a chemist, so he starts out going cyclical talking about what science has taught us about the earth And then he draws on his own theological heritage in the Christian tradition as it's understood in Roman Catholicism And he calls for an integral ecology which combines three things The understanding of what we now know about ecology connected to economy connected to equality Those three things is what makes up the idea of integral ecology You have to see the interconnection between the well-being of the earth and the economic system that we employ to run our lives And the question of whether or not all of that is being mediated through a commitment to equality Which is where the Pope's concerned about the poor comes into this It's really quite a remarkable document Whether it's going to have much impact inside the Roman Catholic Church inside the larger Christian world or beyond is a really good question But it certainly does open up the door for a very very interesting and fruitful conversation I hope it's at least as fruitful as my conversation with you Howard Folks we've been speaking with Howard Vocal, he's meritist professor from Hamline University in the Twin Cities He also has a master's degree from United Theological Seminary in the Twin Cities He's taught law for so many years at Hamline and so his words here today reflect many points of view Both connections with NATO law and the law that we have as our system I find myself enriched by listening to you Howard both with your careful look at the facts and the legal structures that were there But also the moral structures to which we all need to be building our lives So I really appreciate you taking the time thinking and sharing that with the rest of us With your students and with the rest of us Thank you so much for joining me for spirit and action My pleasure And we've been speaking again with Howard Vocal You'll find a link to Howard via the Nordenspiritradio.org website And there are some really choice bonus excerpts on that site that we couldn't fit into this broadcast Appreciation also to Andrew Janssen for production assistance on this and other Nordenspirit radio shows We'll see you next week for spirit in action The theme music for this program is turning of the world performed by Sarah Thompson This spirit in action program is an effort of Northern spirit radio You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website northernspiritradio.org Thank you for listening I am your host Mark Helpsmeet and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light This is spirit in action With every voice, with every song We will move this world along With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing (upbeat music)