Dear RobbyS,
"The American system mandates deference to hierarchy because we have the First Amendment..."
On this assumption, I believe, the bishops counted, and thus didn't worry too much about the particulars of American civil law. Unfortunately, increasing numbers of lawyers and judges don't seem to believe this anymore.
sitetest
Thanks to the positivism taught in Catholic law schools. Maybe you don't know the law professors who sneared at the right-to-life movement did not, by and large, foresee the strength of the political movement against Roe v. Wade. In any case, a good tree surgeon cuts of the dead branches and casts them into the first.