PrawfsBlawg

Garnett on the St. Isidore non-decision

Here is a short piece I did, for the Law & Liberty website, on the recent non-decision in the St. Isidore case.  It's called "Educational Pluralism Delayed".  Here is a bit:

The longstanding American constitutional experiment in religious freedom is not, and never has been, anti-religious. Our governments are “secular,” but they need not and should not be “secularist” in the sense of being hostile to religious institutions and their work and witness in the public square. To be sure, we wisely distinguish between religious and political authorities. We don’t let governors pick bishops, and we don’t let bishops set tax rates. This is what the “separation of church and state,” correctly understood, means. This distinction does not preclude cooperative arrangements between authentically religious schools and governments in the service of opportunity and pluralism.

Although the justices did not reach the merits in the St. Isidore case, their “tie goes to the lower court” order should not be seen as a retreat from settled and sound constitutional principles or as closing the door to innovative policies and programs that expand kids’ access to educational options. There is nothing about public education, properly conceived, that limits it to the work of public employees in government-owned buildings. Children and families benefit, and communities do, too, from pluralism in education. Despite the delay caused by the St. Isidore split, it is increasingly clear that this pluralism is precisely what Americans want.

Call for Papers: Annual Fred C. Zacharias Memorial Prize for Scholarship in Professional Responsibility

Submissions and nominations of articles are being accepted for the sixteenth annual Fred C. Zacharias Memorial Prize for Scholarship in Professional Responsibility.  To honor Fred's memory, the committee will select from among articles in the field of Professional Responsibility with a publication date of 2025.  The prize will be awarded at the 2026 AALS Annual Meeting in New Orleans.  Please send submissions and nominations to Professor Samuel Levine at Touro Law Center: [email protected].  The deadline for submissions and nominations is September 1, 2025.

Steven Smith on "The American Proposition"

We had the honor, last Fall, of hosting Prof. Steven Smith (University of San Diego) for the annual Rice-Hasson Lecture at Notre Dame Law School.  His talk has been published in the (excellent) Church Life Journal, and you can read it here.  It's called "The American Proposition:  Whose Truths? Which Strategies" and is, obviously, inspired by John Courtney Murray's famous 1960 book, We Hold These Truths.  Here's a bit:

Murray’s interpretation of America reflected . . . a confidence that there is such a thing as truth, including moral and political truth. That humans have some capacity to discern such truth—and to reason about it. That one of those truths—the primary truth, actually—is the reality of a God who takes an interest in the affairs of human beings, including their political affairs. That even under conditions of pluralism, a human community should be based on truth—or on the community’s best efforts to discern and articulate truth. And that the relevant truth would itself prescribe not an imposed orthodoxy but rather freedom—freedom especially in matters of thought, speech, and religion. (This last point, by the way—namely, that the truth prescribes freedom—is central to a very different and important current debate that I will allude to later.)

In a condition of freedom, fallible human beings will disagree about the truth. But they can debate such questions in civil fashion. Or so Murray contended. And civilly engaging your neighbor about fundamental matters on which you disagree is not an affront or an insult; on the contrary, it is a manifestation of respect for your neighbor’s beliefs, cognitive capacities, and character. And this kind of civil engagement about truth is the basis of the American Republic. As Murray put it: “Civilization is formed by men locked together in argument.”

At the time his book appeared, there was nothing especially heterodox about his position. . . . 

Mary Leary on Flannery O'Connor and the Criminal Law

My Mirror of Justice colleague Prof. Mary Leary (CUA) has posted a fascinating paper, "Screaming Into the System: The Symbiotic Relationship Between Flannery O'Connor, Violence, and the Criminal Law." I love O'Connor, and I teach Criminal Law, so I guess my enjoyment was overdetermined. In any event, here is the abstract:

This year marks the 100^th birthday of one of America’s most influential writers in history – Flannery O’Connor.  Much has been written about the violence in Flannery O’Connor’s work, but relatively little about the criminal and legal aspects of the violence.  This is rather surprising given the author’s documented influence from actual crimes in stories such as A Good Man is Hard to Find and The Partridge Festival.  It is also surprising given her use of crimes (including homicide, fraud, human trafficking) in her work, as well as her particular focus on the marginalized and vulnerable.  O’Connor herself noted that she often used violence to capture her audience’s attention in an effort to ultimately bring them to her point.  This paper explores that influence on her work through original research at the Flannery O’Connor Archives.

However, as these original documents demonstrate,  with all things that involve Flannery O’Connor, there is much more to this examination than simply how she was influenced by criminal events.  With many of these criminal events, the law played a critical role in the violence, often acting as its catalyst.  Furthermore, as with many criminal events, the poor and vulnerable suffered at the hands of an uncaring society.  O’Connor saw this and utilized the criminal law to comment upon this societal reality.  This law played a critical role in her literature not simply as a historical fact or inspiration, but as a silent character.  More to the point, this silent character’s frequent failure to protect the vulnerable is a repeated theme in O’Connor’s fiction. 

This symbiotic relationship between the criminal law, violence, and O’Connor’s fiction is not only one where O’Connor was influenced by and utilized actual crime and violence in her writing.  But it is also one where she can be a profound inspiration and influence on the modern criminal justice system’s advocates.

O’Connor’s vocational approach to her writing has much to offer the modern justice system’s advocates.  Drafts of her talks in the O’Connor Archives demonstrate that she was challenged to write for an audience whose values and modern sensibilities were hostile to her messages of what she called the “prophetic vision” of truth, judgment, grace, and mercy.  The modern criminal justice advocate finds herself similarly challenged.  Tasked with protecting the most vulnerable – often the unseen or undervalued in society – she must convince a jury to see and value such people and to understand the truth of what has occurred enough to do something unpopular in today’s culture: render a judgment.  Presented with unspeakable violence, this advocate must convey it to her audience, the jury, who often is resistant to believing it occurred.  O’Connor frequently wrote about the writer’s “sense of frustration [being] great because [the writer] has to force by whatever means he can this vision on a resisting or a blank audience.” (Catholic Writer in the Protestant South – draft talk for Southern Literary Festival, April 20, 1962) How O’Connor navigated that vocation to bring an audience to a place of understanding people and truth can operate as a significant influence on those today forged with that task.

This paper examines the synergistic relationship between Flannery O’Connor’s fiction, crime, violence, and the criminal law and what it can offer the modern criminal justice system – a system characterized by a search for truth and justice.  It will also suggest that O'Connor offers an inspirational framework for those who participate in the system as advocates for the vulnerable.

Evan Bernick on "How Not To Teach Criminal Law"

Thanks to Will Baude, I came across this short essay by Prof. Evan Bernick (NIU College of Law). The paper is part of a symposium and is called "How Not To Teach Criminal Law".  Here is a bit from the abstract:

I teach something called "criminal law," which doesn't exist but which many people believe does exist. And so, I must be skilled in contending. The descriptive gap between the realities of criminalization and the content of the conventional 1L criminal-law curriculum is no less horrifying than Charybdis's maw. When teaching, I navigate between representing criminal law as existing, raising skeptical doubts about its existence, and questioning whether anything like it might be justified, if it did exist. I do this because I think I owe it to my students to teach what is and is not, and to raise questions about what ought and ought not be. So, I teach criminal law-and I also try not to.

Interested readers might also want to check out the late Jeffrie Murphy's essay, "'In the Penal Colony' and Why I am Now Reluctant to Teach Criminal Law."

Like Prof. Bernick, I also teach - last Fall was my 20th time -- "something called 'criminal law.'" I love it (although I'm not a Criminal Law scholar; I've written a few things about capital punishment and punishment theory). To be sure, as Prof. Bernick describes, teaching the first-year class (I also teach some upper-level electives on Criminal Law topics) requires one to address the . . . disconnect between the "General Part" stuff that is that class's focus and the realities of policing, prison conditions, plea bargaining, discrimination, poverty, overcriminalization, and so on. (I thought Prof. Bernick's discussion of "criminalisation" was particularly interesting.) And, there is no doubt that the typical first-year class spends more time on homicide, and less on, say, drugs and guns, than "the real world" of criminal-law practice involves.

My own view continues to be, though, that "Criminal Law" "exists" (as much as any other first-year subject does, anyway!), is justified, and should be taught to law students for reasons that go beyond preparation for bar examinations. As I see it, a political community may and should identify some morally blameworthy acts as crimes and punish appropriately those who commit such acts and the enterprise of identifying these acts and punishing those who commit them is one that law students should study (notwithstanding the "disconnect" mentioned above). Some reasons law students should study it might seem a bit pedestrian and familiar: it is good for first-year students who learn how to read, interpret, and apply statutes; to appreciate early on the importance of notice, clarity, prospectivity, legality, and lenity; and to learn to think "elementally". In addition, though, I think it is (or, can/should be) an opportunity for underscoring (again, notwithstanding the "disconnect" mentioned above and the pathologies and problems we are familiar with and that Prof. Bernick emphasizes) the fact that the Criminal Law is not simply a list of directives and prohibitions aimed at persons; it is also (or, it should be) a crucial reminder that the infliction, form, and severity of punishment by government stands in need, always, of justification and constraint.

Anyway. Check out the Bernick (and Murphy) essays.        

A Course on "The Legal Profession"

A million years ago, when I was in law school, I took a course, taught by David Luban, called "The Legal Profession" (which, thanks to some Yale Law School magic, satisfied a professional-responsibility requirement although it was not, at all, about "the rules" of P.R.).  We read Luban's Lawyers and Justice, Ishiguro's Remains of the Day, Galanter's Tournament of Lawyers, some books about the evolution of the profession and the rise of big law firms, a book about Skadden, and -- providentially for me! -- some articles by a fascinating scholar who would become my colleague at Notre Dame, Tom Shaffer.  And some other things.

I've long wanted to teach a class like this, i.e., a course that I could hold out as satisfying our P.R. requirement but that was really more about "Lawyers and Society."  Has anyone taken, or taught, a class like this?

Program on Church, State & Society essay-writing competition

The Program on Church, State & Society is hosting, again, an essay-writing contest (for law students and recent graduates) on religious-liberty topics.  There's more information here.  Consider submitting a paper!

The Program on Church, State & Society at Notre Dame Law School is pleased to announce a writing competition on topics and questions within the Program’s focus. This writing competition requests student-authored scholarly papers and will honor winners with cash awards. The purpose of this writing competition is to encourage scholarship related to the intersections of church, state & society and, in particular, how the law structures and governs that intersection.

Topic and Form: Papers should be focused, broadly, on topics related to church, state & society. For guidance on selecting a topic, students may wish to view our Program website and mission statement: https://churchstate.nd.edu/

Papers must be between 9,000-13,000 words, including footnotes and/or endnotes.

Eligibility: The competition is open to law students in good standing, enrolled in a traditional law degree (J.D. or LL.B.), a Master’s degree (LL.M.), or a doctoral degree (S.J.D./J.S.D. or Ph.D.) program at an ABA-accredited law school within the United States. The competition is also open to recent graduates not yet practicing law (i.e., those completing clerkships or engaged in similar pursuits are eligible). Co-authored papers will not be accepted.

Submissions: Papers must be submitted by May 15, 2025. Winners will be announced on or before July 1, 2025. Papers must be e-mailed in .pdf form. Each submission must include a cover letter and resume in a separate .pdf document. Papers should not include author names in order to ensure that the papers can be delivered to judges and scored anonymously. Emailed submissions should be sent with “2025 Church, State & Society Writing Competition” in the subject line, and addressed to: Alicia Cummins.

Judges: Papers will be judged by Prof. Richard W. Garnett, director of the Program on Church, State & Society; by Prof. Jorge Barrera Rojas, the Notre Dame Law School Rodes Fellow; by other faculty members at Notre Dame Law School; and possibly by law & religion scholars from other U.S. law schools.

Prizes: First Place, $3,000 cash award; Second Place, $2,000 cash award; Third Place, $1,000 cash award; Honorable Mention(s), $500 cash award.

Notre Dame Law Review RFP 2025-26 Symposia

NOTRE DAME LAW REVIEW 2025–2026 SYMPOSIA:

REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS

The Notre Dame Law Review invites proposals for its two 2025–2026 symposia. In accordance with twenty-five years of tradition, one of the Law Review’s symposia will be on a topic related to federal courts, practice, and procedure. The second symposium’s topic is not limited in scope and can focus on any engaging matter.

Previous Federal Courts, Practice, & Procedure Symposium topics include:

• State Standing
• The Future of Qualified Immunity
• Constitutional Structure
• The Eleventh Amendment, Sovereign Immunity, & Alden v. Maine
• The Judiciary Act of 1925

Previous general symposium topics include:

• Constitutional Reconstruction: History and the Meaning of the Thirteenth,

Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments

• Contemporary Free Speech: The Marketplace of Ideas a Century Later
• Administrative Lawmaking in the 21st Century
• Religious Liberty and the Free Society: Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of

Dignitatis Humanae

• The American Congress: Legal Implications of Gridlock

The Notre Dame Law Review has a long-standing tradition of hosting symposia that unite well-respected and diverse speakers. Our goal is to foster intellectual engagement and create a forum for all to explore timely legal topics. Traditionally, each participant publishes an article in one of the Law Review’s symposium issues.

What to Include in Your Proposal

Please submit your proposal as a PDF document. A strong proposal should be no

more than five pages and include the following:

• A proposed title;
• A brief description explaining the topic, its importance, and its relevance (no

more than 500 words);

• A list of individuals you might invite to write pieces for your proposed

symposium for publication in the Notre Dame Law Review;

            o Please indicate what level of interest each individual has expressed, if

            any.

            o Please note that symposium issues generally include between seven

            and ten articles.

• If available, a brief description of proposed paper topics;
• A list of individuals who (1) might participate in your symposium without

writing pieces for publication or (2) may be interested in publishing a shorter

response piece in the Law Review’s online journal, Reflection (and what

interest these individuals have expressed in participating, if any);

• The name and contact information of the proposed symposium organizer who

would serve as the point person for coordination and decisions with the Law

Review executive board; and

• Any potential sources of funding.

Please indicate whether your proposal would require more than one day. Symposia

are traditionally held on a single day.

How to Submit Your Proposal

Please submit your proposal by email to [email protected]. The Notre Dame Law

Review will accept submissions until March 14, 2025. For questions, please email the Managing Symposium Editor, Emily Amershek, at [email protected].

Proposal Selection

The Symposium Team will review each proposal based on the following factors: • Definition and focus of topic • Originality of topic • Timeliness and importance of topic • Experience and expertise of proposed presenters/panelists • Academic quality • Available funding Thank you, and we look forward to hearing from you!

Happy Repeal Day!

On this day, in 1933, the 21st Amendment was ratified, repealing the 18th, which had provided for the prohibition of the "manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes[.]" For an excellent book about the Prohibition experiment, its history and context, and its (very interesting) legal and constitutional implications and legacy, check out Daniel Okrent's Last Call.

One of the (many) not-done things on my list of "things I'd like to do as a law professor" is a seminar-course, based on Okrent's book, about Prohibition (broadly understood), including its connection to immigration, anti-Catholicism, the rise of federal criminal law, census and districting shenanigans, legal moralism, etc.  Someday . . . 

 

Changes to Criminal Law course (advice welcome!)

This Fall will be (I think) the 17th time I've taught the first-year Criminal Law course.  (At Notre Dame, the class is sometimes in the Fall, and sometimes in the Spring. For what it's worth, I strongly prefer the Fall.) The course and assignments have evolved over the years (for example, for the first few years, I didn't teach any of the sexual-assault materials) but, at the same time, I cannot pretend to have made any dramatic overhauls for a while.

This year, I've made a few changes to the Download Criminal Law Syllabus (Fall 2024), though, and I'd welcome feedback about them. In particular, I added coverage, in the actual-crimes section, of theft (larceny) and possession (drugs and guns) to criminal homicide and sexual assault (and cut down on necessity and duress). And (with regret), I dropped a requirement I have often used that students read a scholarly monograph on criminal-law-related policy/reform (in addition to the casebook stuff). In the past, I've used books by Rachel Barkow, Stephanos Bibas, John Pfaff, and others. But, I decided this year that this requirement was possibly introducing excessive varation (and workload differences) among our three sections.  Sigh. 

Fifteen years of the Annual Law and Religion Roundtable

Tempus fugit, and all that. I recently returned from Sabanville -- I mean, Tuscaloosa -- and the Annual Law and Religion Roundtable, which I've been organizing and hosting with Nelson Tebbe (Cornell) and our own Paul Horwitz for fifteen (!) years now.

We got the idea, if I recall correctly, from a workshop-style conference for younger property-law scholars that Ben Barros (now at Stetson) and Nestor Davidson (now at Fordham) put together out in Colorado. Each year -- well, we had to Zoom two of them, and miss one year altogether, because of COVID - we've held our version at a different school -- a "movable feast", as Paul likes to say! -- and exploited the on-site generosity of different colleagues.  Over the years, several hundred scholars -- from a variety of disciplines, at a range of career stages, with a variety of interests and perspectives -- have participated, and we've met from Stanford to Virginia to Toronto to Notre Dame (and a bunch of other places in between).

This tradition (!) has been -- for me, anyway! -- a highlight of the academic year. Notwithstanding disagreements about non-trivial questions, methodological differences, and a diversity of commitments and priors, the conversations have been productive and collegial, and the socializing and fellowship uplifting and encouraging. I've been particularly struck by (among other things) how strongly I've come to prefer the roudtable/workshop-type academic gathering to the panels-and-audience type (which is not to say I don't welcome your invitations to the latter!).

I know there are other, similar events that happen in other fields or around other themes ("The Schmooze", etc.), and I'd welcome hearing about others' experiences in the comments . . .   

On complaining about mud: a response to Steve

Steve echoes, in his recent post on the Rahimi case, a complaint that we are hearing from some law professors, namely, that the Court has not yet provided a clear (enough) standard for distinguishing firearms regulations that comply with the Second Amendment from those that do not.  I like clarity; I'm kind of a formalist; I generally like "rules" more than "standards" (in law); so, I think I "get" the impulse.  Still, the complaint seems, to me, misplaced. 

Now, to engage the issue, it seems to me, one has to accept the premise that the Second Amendment has something to do with regulations besides those dealing with the National Guard.  Those who profess to hold the view that the Second Amendment provides no protections to -- has nothing to say about -- individuals who wish to own, buy, possess, and use firearms wouldn't seem to have much constructive to say about the doctrinal question presented in a case like Rahimi.  And, it seems to me that, to constructively engage the Court on this matter, one has to accept, if only for the sake of argument, that the Second Amendment's judicially enforceable content has some connection to the "original meaning" of the Second and Fourteenth Amendments.  That is, if one's view is that the answer to Second Amendment questions that come up in courts is "uphold the regulations that are sound policy, and strike down the ones that are not", it doesn't seem to me that there's much point to wrestling with the Court's efforts to announce and apply "originalist" (and capable-of-being-understood-by-regulators-and-lower-courts) doctrines.

So, has the Court dropped the ball? Are things actually "mud"? I'm not sure, but . . . compared to what? It seems unlikely to me that lower courts have less to go on, when it comes to firearms regulations, than they did under, say, the "effects" part of the Lemon test in the 1970s and 80s . . . or most areas of con law, including ones that Rahimi critics like.  The law with respect to cooperation between religious schools and public authorities, for example, is way, way clearer now than it was 40 years ago, but my sense is that this clarity doesn't make most online legal scholars happy. Is the inquiry that Rahimi calls for any "muddier" than the one that, say, all applications of "strict scrutiny" in rights cases call for? (Is the question whether an interest is, or is not, "compelling" any "muddier" than the question whether a particular firearms regulation is meaningfully like a regulation that was accepted at the time of the relevant ratifications?) 

Call for Papers: Annual Fred C. Zacharias Memorial Prize for Scholarship in Professional Responsibility

Submissions and nominations of articles are being accepted for the fifteenth annual Fred C. Zacharias Memorial Prize for Scholarship in Professional Responsibility.  To honor Fred's memory, the committee will select from among articles in the field of Professional Responsibility with a publication date of 2024.  The prize will be awarded at the 2025 AALS Annual Meeting in San Francisco.  Please send submissions and nominations to Professor Samuel Levine at Touro Law Center: [email protected].  The deadline for submissions and nominations is September 1, 2024.

Lateral position announcments at Notre Dame Law School

The Notre Dame Law School has advertised some open lateral searches, tenured and tenure-track.  The searches are not limited to any particular subject(s). Come join us in South Bend!  

20 Years of Mirror of Justice

With apologies for shamelessly promoting another blog's news . . . this weekend was the 20th anniversary of the first post at the Mirror of Justice blog - a project that purported/aspired to be about "Catholic legal theory", which I co-founded with then-Dean Mark Sargent, well, 20 years ago. I confess, I'm a bit thrown off by the realization that computers existed, let alone blogs, 20 years ago but, put that aside. Happy birthday to us! 

A New (for me) Course on "The Law of American Democracy"

This semester, I am excited, and fortunate, to be teaching a course to undergraduates (primarily Political Science majors) at the University of Notre Dame. The class is called "The Law of American Democracy" and it is a mash-up of topics and material I've taught in Constitutional Law (the "structure" stuff), Constitutional Theory, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, and some directed readings on Election Law and Voting Rights.  Some animating aims include proposing to the students that they should be thinking not only about a political system's policy "outputs" but also about the legal (and other) features of its "operating system" and that they should engage with the particular features of "our democracy" (about which we hear a lot in nervous contemporary commentary) and not just with a notion of "democracy" in some kind of ideal or abstract form.  (Another motivator, I think, was my unease with Martin Loughlin's Against Constitutionalism.)

The reading for the first day (today!) is Raz, "On the Authority and Interpretation of Constitutions:  Some Preliminaries" (thanks to Ernie Young for directing me to this paper, years ago).  

I'd welcome suggestions and advice, either in the comments or directly!

Panel event TODAY at Notre Dame: "The Rising Tide of Antisemitism on American Campuses and Beyond"

Notre Dame Law School and our Religious Liberty Initiative are hosting TODAY an important, if distressingly timely, event on "the rising tide of antisemitism on American Campuses and Beyond." The event will be live-streamed.

On November 30, Notre Dame Law School Professors Avishalom Tor and Stephanie Barclay will host the event, "The Rising Tide of Antisemitism on American Campuses and Beyond" at the McCartan Courtroom in Eck Hall of Law.

The panel discussion includes a keynote address delivered by Professor Ruth Wisse, Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and Comparative Literature Emerita at Harvard University.

The panelists include:

Ken Marcus, Esq., Chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law
Most Reverend Robert J. McClory, Bishop of the Diocese of Gary
Professor Jeffrey Veidlinger, Joseph Brodsky Collegiate Professor of History and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan

The event will begin with an introduction from Professor Avishalom Tor, Professor of Law and Director of the Notre Dame Program on Law and Market Behavior (ND LAMB) at Notre Dame Law School.

The opening remarks will be delivered by Dean G. Marcus Cole, Joseph A. Matson Dean and Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School.

The panel discussion will be moderated by Professor Stephanie Barclay, Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School and Faculty Director of the Notre Dame Religious Liberty Initiative.

 

The Annual Fall Conference at Notre Dame: "Dust of the Earth: On Persons."

For over 20 years, a highlight of my academic year has been the annual Fall Conference, put on by the DeNicola Center for Ethics and Culture, which is led by my good friend Prof. Carter Snead.  This year's theme is "Dust of Earth:  On Persons."  Here is the full schedule (there's a lot!); the conference starts today.  (Streaming is available!) Plenty of the sessions and talks will be of interest to lawyers and legal scholars, particularly those interested in law-and-technology, bioethics, and the rights of disabled persons. And, (perhaps!) best of all, there's a whole panel on "persons" in the work of Cormac McCarthy! 

Steve Smith on Legal Education's "Bleak" Future

Prof. Steven Smith (San Diego) posted, a few days ago, a short essay at the Law and Liberty site called "A Bleak Future for Legal Education." Like everything Steve writes, the piece is engaging, learned, and provocative.  In this essay, Steve returns to a number of the themes developed in his great 2007 book, Law's Quandary, including the "malaise" that attends the fact that our legal arguments, premises, and practices presuppose an "ontology" that, really, "we" don't believe anymore.  He opens with Holmes's quote:

The remoter and more general aspects of the law are those which give it a universal interest. It is through them that you not only become a great master in your calling, but connect your subject with the universe and catch an echo of the infinite, a glimpse of its unfathomable process, a hint of the universal law.

Then, he outlines what he sees as two contemporary threats -- I'll shorthand them "cynicism" and "consumerism" - to the way of thinking the quote reflects, or presupposes. (A third threat, which purports to be a solution, is alluded to at the end.)  Stuart Banner, Aquinas, Chesterton, Darwin, Freud, "the Crits", The Demons, and Thrasymachus (et al.) appear along the way.

Like the man says, "highly recommended"!

No, There Is No "Ethical Morass" at the Supreme Court

Steve linked, the other day, to his piece at The Hill, and referred to an "ethical morass" at the Supreme Court. But, there is no such thing. There is, to be sure, a well funded and well executed campaign -- Neil Postman, call your office -- to create/manufacture the impression of such a "morass" in order to -- now that the Court is less likely than it was in previous decades to deliver outcomes congenial to most law professors and legal commentators -- tarnish the Court's (well, for some reason, only some Court members') -- reputation.

It is depressing, but hard to avoid concluding, that those participating in the construction and dissemination of these stories know well that they are political operations, aimed at stirring up political feeling and activism with respect to abortion, racial preferences, etc.  (I do not think they are not about the Confrontation Clause, but I could be wrong!) The latest episode in this campaign might be the most ludicrous, i.e., the suggestions that there is something nefarious or "scrutiny"-worthy about the fact that Justice Barrett . . . sold her house when she moved from South Bend to the Washington, D.C. area.  Oh, and even here, it is thought to be relevant that Barrett is Catholic. I suppose we'll soon enjoy Slate scoops about the "dogma" involved in moving Michiana housing stock.  

In every (supposed) "morass" story -- about Justice Alito's op-ed, about Chief Justice Roberts's spouse's job, about Justice Thomas's travels, about the house-hunting help that Justice Gorsuch got (for some reason, the stories are never about the friends and activities of justices appointed by Democrats) -- one eventually encounters (if only out of shame) the concession that the events being reported as somehow concerning are/were not, in fact, ethical or legal violations. And, maybe, one encounters a grudging concession that those justices who have not -- for some reason! -- been the subject of pro publica's (no doubt earnest and non-partisan) attentions have also been involved in similar events. 

This stuff is bad, and low, and -- to be candid -- gross. Claims to care about "our democracy," when pressed by people who are participating in, or cheering on, a transparent and (I fear) damaging campaign against the Court, ring hollow, in my view. Now, if anyone's interested in more wide-ranging conversations about the merits of a more Thayerian (and so less Brennan- or Kennedy-esque) federal judiciary generally, I'm here for it!

Smith on "Christians and/as Liberals?"

My fellow "neo-medievalist" (!) Prof. Steve Smith (San Diego) has posted the article-version of a talk he gave at a Notre Dame conference last fall on "Liberalism, Christianity, and Constitutionalism." (Here is an op-ed version of the remarks I delivered at the same event.)  Here is Steve's abstract:

Recently, as part of a more general examination and criticism of liberalism, the relation between Christianity and liberalism has been much discussed. Some critics, sometimes associated with the label “integralism,” argue that Christianity and liberalism are fundamentally incompatible. Examining both consistencies and inconsistencies, this article argues to the contrary that liberalism may be, for now, for us, in our historical circumstances, the alternative that prudent Christians should prefer.

In the paper, Smith engages, inter alia, the versions of liberalism-criticism offered in recent years by Adrian Vermeule, Patrick Deneen, etc.  Here's something from the concluding pages (which, FWIW, seems right to me):

From this point of view, a properly governed and genuinely liberal regime might indeed be the best that a Christian should hope for, short of the end time when (Christians believe) the true King and Prince of Peace will rule. Liberalism might be, to borrow from Winston Churchill, the worst form of government except for all the others. In a genuinely liberal regime, people would be governed by ideals that at least derive from basic Christian beliefs, and by a regime that adopts as its central purpose protecting and promoting the ability of people (including Christians) to live and even to proselytize in accordance with their beliefs. At the same time, such a regime would not adopt the un-Christian and self-defeating tactics of using force and violence to enforce Christian beliefs that are efficacious only if sincerely and voluntarily embraced. The novelist Walker Percy, when asked why he was a Catholic, used to answer “What else is there?” Asked why he or she is a liberal, a Christian today might respond with the same question.

Higher Education and Institutional Pluralism

About a million years ago (well, 15, but still . . . ) I posted here at Prawfsblawg about then-AALS President John Garvey's theme-for-the-year of "institutional pluralism."  (See also here and here.) Confirming, I guess, my one-trick-pony status, here is a short essay, posted today at Law and Liberty about institutional diversity in higher education.  Here's just a bit:

Higher education in America, it is often observed, confronts serious challenges, even crises. True, many of the world’s leading research institutions are in the United States. And yet: Tuition-costs are soaring; the footprints and portfolios of human-resources, student-services, and other administrators are expanding; tenure-track faculty positions (especially in the humanities) are disappearing; reliance on (often exploited) adjuncts, graduate students, and short-term instructors is increasing; and regulatory burdens are growing. . . .

Arguments about diversity in higher education are, of course, both unavoidable and highly charged. Generally, these debates have to do with the use of race in the admissions practices of elite institutions or with the dramatically one-sided make-up of these institutions’ faculty, administration, and leadership. A crucial dimension of the diversity problem, however, is less noticed: In a nutshell, we should be concerned about not only intellectual diversity within institutions, but also meaningful diversity among institutions, that is, what John Garvey, the President Emeritus of the Catholic University of America, called “institutional pluralism.” . . . 

Our First Amendment institutions will do their important jobs less well, and fulfill their role less well, if they are all the same. The beautiful Gothic cathedrals, to avoid collapsing, employ a variety of strengths and supports; we all admire the windows, but recognize also that the flying buttresses and pointed arches do necessary work. Just as ecosystem is healthier, and an agricultural enterprise is more sustainable, if it is diverse and not a monoculture, so the landscape of higher education is better and healthier if it is characterized by institutional pluralism rather than sameness.

Our colleges and universities should not all look the same; they should (within reasonable bounds) have varying curricula and programs; they should develop different specialties and sub-fields; they should cultivate distinctive missions and aspirations; they may take on a range of characters; they should come in multiple shapes and sizes. Institutional pluralism means, among other things, that our colleges and universities may be public and private, big and small, research-focused or liberal-artsy. We can, and should, have land-grant institutions, historically Black institutions, single-sex institutions, and military institutions. Some can focus on music and the arts; others on engineering and technology. Some may be animated by religious traditions and aims, others by environmentalism or multiculturalism. An institution’s distinctive mission will shape its curriculum, its policies, its hiring, and its student body. And, these differences will, taken together, strengthen expressive freedom’s necessary infrastructure. . . .

Three Years Ago Today . . .

OTD in 2020, the President of the University of Notre Dame, Fr. John Jenkins, had an op-ed in The New York Times called "We're Reopening Notre Dame. It's Worth the Risk."  He wrote, among other things, that "[f]or questions about moral value — how we ought to decide and act — science can inform our deliberations, but it cannot provide the answer." This decision, at the time, came in for a lot of unfair, uncharitable, and even ghoulish criticism. (One critic, I recall, lamented the workings of the university's alleged "Marian Death Cult.") Jenkins was right, though, and one hopes that, especially in the context of schooling -- including legal education -- future policymakers' cost-benefit analyses and applications of the precautionary principle will be similarly prudent.

"Justice Breyer and the Establishment Clause"

Here is a (short) paper of mine, "Justice Breyer and the Establishment Clause:  Notes on 'Appeasement,' 'Legal Judgment,' and 'Divisiveness'":

Stephen G. Breyer served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
for nearly three decades. And yet, during his long career and
notwithstanding his wide-ranging interests, he never authored a majority
opinion resolving a dispute about the meaning of that Amendment’s
Establishment Clause. Nevertheless, Justice Breyer’s writings and record
regarding the no-establishment rule are distinctive in at least three ways.

First, there is the fact that he did not vote uniformly with his more
secularist colleagues in divided Establishment Clause cases. That is, he
often resisted the stricter applications of the no-establishment rule
endorsed by some of his colleagues. Next, he regularly rejected the
argument that such cases could or should be resolved by applying a
particular “test” and was unmoved by the lure of any grand unified theories
about the provision. His approach was consciously particularistic and
case-by-case; he saw church-state controversies as highly, inevitably
fact-bound, solvable only through a judicial-balancing exercise akin to the
proportionality review that is practiced in some other jurisdictions. And,
more often than any other justice in the Court’s history, he identified the
Clause’s primary purpose as the avoidance of “religiously based
divisiveness” and insisted that law-and-religion disputes should be decided
in the way most likely to promote this purpose.

This emphasis on the judicial management of strife, and his view that
judges charged with interpreting and applying the First Amendment are
authorized to invalidate those actions of political actors that are
determined or predicted to have excessive potential for conflict-creation,
are Justice Breyer’s signature Establishment Clause contributions. This
view, though, is mistaken and these contributions are regrettable.

Like the man says, "download it while it's hot"!

(Still) more on the "Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence" and FIRE.

Howard has suggested, in some recent posts (here and here) that there is some inconsistency between FIRE's opposition to, say, disinviting and/or shouting down campus speakers, such as Judge Kyle Duncan, and its (I gather) failure to criticize the (now abandoned) decision of the Los Angeles Dodgers to disinvite the "Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence" from an event at Dodger Stadium. 

I disagree; the merits matter. The "Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence" are not merely (though they are) "offensive-to-some"; they are a hate group, and they traffic in a kind of nasty bigotry and obscenity that, I am confident, Howard would not shrug off were it directed at another religious group, regardless of his disagreement with that group's teachings or beliefs. A group like FIRE is, it seems to me, on solid ground when it distinguishes between (a) students at an elite university harassing a Article III judge who has been invited, in accord with established procedures, to deliver a university-appropriate talk and (b) a for-profit sports franchise deciding that, all things considered, it's a bad idea to invite and promote a hate group, the schtick of which is to mock professed religious women who share the faith of the largest religious community in that sports franchise's city.

Moreland on Liberalism and Christianity

Michael Moreland (Villanova) has posted on SSRN a new paper, "Contingency and Contestation in Liberalism and Christianity) which discusses (among other things) the presentations at a conference last fall at Notre Dame Law School on Liberalism and Christianity.  Prawfs participating included Amy Sepinwell, Andy Koppelman, Brandon Paradise, Kathleen Brady, Steven Smith, and Nathan Chapman.  Also discussed are recent works by Adrian Vermeule and Patrick Deneen.  Here's Michael's abstract:

The essays in this Symposium engage in recurring sets of issues, and here I wish to highlight four of them: (1) the relationship between liberalism and theological traditions; (2) the historically contingent and contested accounts of how liberalism and Christianity have developed over centuries in a relationship that has varied from conciliatory to hostile and what implications that account has for the history of ideas; (3) debates in legal scholarship that are illuminated by posing broader questions about liberalism, Christianity, and constitutionalism, and in particular the relationship of liberalism to different social forms, including religious institutions; (4) the renewed interest in the relationship between liberalism and Christianity in light of a new generation of critics of liberalism, whether Catholic integralists or other types of anti-liberalism, and the question—posed forcefully at the end of Steven Smith’s paper—of if not liberalism, then what else?

Michael does, I think, a great job of capturing the richness of the conversation.  [I presented at the symposium, but didn't (mea culpa!) produce a law-review article.  Here is a short version of my presentation, "Why Liberalism and Constitutionalism Need Christianity."]

"Exploring Law Through a Christian Lens" at the Legal Vocation Fellowship

Lawprawf John Inazu (WUSTL) has a Substack.  (Recommended!)  His latest entry describes a 4-day event, part of a year-plus program that he's designed (and in which I participate), called the Legal Vocation Fellowship.  Here's a bit from John's report:

This past week, I hosted a three-day conference for the Legal Vocation Fellowship (LVF), a fifteen-month cohort experience for early career Christian attorneys. During our time together, we explored how Christians might think about the practice of law as a vocation with discussion-based lectures from five law professors: Rick Garnett (Notre Dame), Ruth Okediji (Harvard), Lisa Schiltz (St. Thomas), David Skeel (Penn), and me. We covered a wide range of readings, including selections from Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Kuyper, and MacIntyre, as well as some biblical texts.

On Thursday evening, LVF held a public dialogue titled “Redeeming Law” at Washington University School of Law. The dialogue explored connections between Christianity and the law and featured Professors Okediji, Schiltz, and Skeel, moderated by Professor Garnett.

Read John's account.  It was a really affirming and rewarding experience. Among other things, I got to re-read, and talk to smart young lawyers about, After Virtue!  And -- I cannot resist -- here's a shot of the five faculty participants:

Pico as Derelict

Dissenting, in Lambert v. California (1957), Justice Frankfurter predicted that the 5-4 ruling would "turn out to be . . . a derelict on the waters of the law."  Whatever the merits of Justice Frankfurter's prediction, I was reminded of it by Howard's recent post about a federal district court order in Texas that invoked Pico to require (quoting the post) "Llano County to return twelve books to the public library shelves and enjoined further book removals."

Let's put aside debates about the Marks rule, or about the semantic content of the Pico opinions by Justices White and Blackmun, or about the wisdom of the Llano County removal decision, or about the tiresome-ness of newspaper reports that refer to the removed books as "banned."  It seems to me that Pico is the among the most derelict-ish rulings of my lifetime.  (Lopez and Morrison, bless their hearts, might be the most, but put them aside, too!)

The federal court in Texas invoked, from a Fifth Circuit case quoting the Pico plurality, a “First Amendment right to receive information” which prevents libraries from “remov[ing] books from school library shelves ‘simply because they dislike the ideas contained in these books.’” But . . .  there is no general "First Amendment right to receive information" and libraries are entirely free to roam through their collections and ditch stuff they have decided isn't worth keeping.  If a local librarian in Llano County were to decide (correctly) that Ayn Rand's novels are not only badly written, but pernicious, there is no constitutional prohibition on tossing them all to make room for more Piketty.  (Yes, I realize that the preceding two sentences are inconsistent with, well, Pico.) 

Whatever rule or principle the Brennan opinion in Pico might be applying -- besides "this seems hinky" -- has not been consistently applied (if it has been applied at all) to "government decisions about what it does with its stuff."  No one really thinkgs that federal courts are authorized by the First Amendment to review the shelf-culling decisions of 2023 librarians regarding the shelf-stocking decisions of their 1953 predecessors.  If the "Pico principle" were taken seriously, I suppose the government would be obligated -- not merely in a nondiscrimination, Carson-type sense, but in a positive, obligatory sense -- to fund parents' decisions to send their kids to parochial schools.  [Ed.:  Sounds good, Rick.  What's your point?]

More on "Civil Discourse" and Judge Duncan

I was substantially offline for a while, and so missed a number of updates and posts -- scroll down, and read them all! -- regarding Judge Kyle Duncan's appearance at Stanford Law School.  (For my earlier take on what I continue to regard as the very bad behavior of some SLS students and a SLS administrator, go here.)  And, several Prawfs colleagues have weighed in on the follow-up news items, including Judge Duncan's recent talk at Notre Dame (which I did not attend), Dean Jenny Martinez's lengthy open letter (which I thought was very good), and Dean Tirien Steinbach's Wall Street Journal piece (which I thought presented a version of the SLS events that departed non-trivially from what took place).

It is often important and welcome to achieve disagreement, and Howard's recent post on Judge Duncan's Notre Dame speech suggests that we have.  (Yay, us!)  Although I generally endorse the all-in-free-speech-libertarianism vibe of the Sullivan quote, I continue to think Howard is wrong to characterize/frame disruption, insults, "public shaming," etc., during an invited lecture, organized in accord with normal procedures, in an academic setting as "counter-speech."  Putting aside all state-action issues:  To say that, in this particular context, the norm is that the invited speaker gets to speak without disruption is not to question, at all, the idea that "debate on public issues should be uninhibited" or to disagree that such debate may include "vehement, caustic, and sometimesly unpleasantly sharp attacks on . . . public officials."

I also think that the comparison suggested in an earlier post of Howard's doesn't work.  The decision by a university administrator not to permit, in a particular setting, a student group's proposed drag show implicates, it seems to me, different norms than does the decision by various students (and Dean Steinbach) to disrupt a lecture that was -- again, in accord with regular, established procedures -- approved. The former is a determination (which might well be mistaken) that a particular event is not appropriate in a particular context; that latter is a determination to undermine an event that was found to be appropriate for that context.

On "Asymmetry" and "Civil Discourse" -- Or, Why Howard is Wrong

In my view, the treatment of Judge Kyle Duncan at Stanford Law School was awful.  And, in my view, the efforts of a number of academics and commentators to downplay the awfulness of that treatment is depressing.  

More specifically, though:  My colleague Howard has two recent posts on the matter that, I think, are mistaken.  First, in "Asymmetrical Censorship", Howard contends that the "left" censors using private power while the "right" does so using state power.  This contention, it seems to me, is wrong.  It's not wrong, of course, to distinguish (both normatively and in terms of effects) the censorship that is imposed by private power from the censorship that is imposed by state power (and both kinds of censorship exist).  But it seems, to put it mildly, incongruent with the facts to suggest that the "left" eschews using state power to silence/punish expression.  [Ed.: Insert here a gabillion links.] 

In his other post, Howard returns to a position he has developed in other posts, and says that "the 'civil discourse' trope . . . is and always has been bullshit."  No, it isn't. (He also says, in passing, that Judge Duncan "went to Stanford itching for a fight . . . and would have been as dismissive and rude to silent protesters."  I have no reason, and neither does Howard, to think this is true.  We both do have reasons, though, to think that Judge Duncan was set up, and that the Administrator prepared weird and offensively condescending remarks for delivery.)  It is not "bullshit" to endorse a norm that, when speakers are invited, in keeping with established procedures, to deliver remarks, in a space that is not Speaker's Corner [especially a higher-education space], those who dislike the speaker, or his or her views, should (a) attend and listen, and ask questions in keeping with usual practice; (b) avoid the event; or (c) protest the event, outside the space.)

It's also not too much to think that students at one of our nation's best law schools should be able to better express disagreement with a speaker's (in their view) misguided views than to yell about the speaker's and his or her spouse's intimate practices.  But, I guess, that's a separate question.

An(other) post-AALS post on Dobbs etc.

Like Paul, I did not attend the AALS Annual Meeting this year. In the past, for 15 years or so, I was a regular attendee and participant but, recently, in part because of kids' school-vacation schedules and in part for the obvious reasons, I've been going to the Wasatch Range instead. And, like Paul, reading the program and panel descriptions, I was struck -- I wish I could say I was surprised -- by the strong evidence of a lack of interest, on the part of AALS and Section leadership, in representing the range of informed and intelligent views on panels having to do with, e.g., the Dobbs decision (in contrast with the Federalist Society's event). I heard, from someone who was present, that, when asked by a floor questioner why all of the panelists agreed re: Dobbs's badness, one of the panelists said "maybe because we are right." Maybe.

I did, though, read Dean Erwin Chemerinsky's "President's Message" ("Law Schools, Civil Discourse, and the Political Divide"), in the AALS's Fall 2022 newsletter, which turned up the other day in my mailbox.  After noting that "this is a particularly fraught and troubling time in our nation’s history"; that "[t]he country is more deeply politically divided than at any time since Reconstruction"; that "[f]aith in the institutions of government, including the Supreme Court, is at an all-time low"; and that "the vitriol in public rhetoric continues to grow", he writes:

The Supreme Court’s decision to overrule Roe v. Wade and likely to end affirmative action in higher education has led to many of our students being more dejected about the Court and constitutional law than I have ever seen in over four decades as a law professor. Of course, our conservative students are jubilant, but our progressive and even moderate students see a Court that has situated itself solidly on the far-right side of the political divide and is likely to remain that way for years or even decades to come.

It's probably not worth litigating here whether Dean Chemerinsky's sense of where the "far-right side of the political divide" starts is correct and whether he has made the mistake of identifying the views of the typical reader of the AALS newsletter with the American political mainstream. Certainly, it is not the case that, say, doubts about the constitutional bona fides of the anomalously permissive Roe/Casey regime or about race-based college admissions are confined to the "far-right side of the political divide." In any event, it is not surprising that those students who do regret the Court's current composition and output would feel not only safe in sharing, but invited and welcome to share, those regrets with Dean Chemerinsky. Whether he is hearing from a representative sample -- indeed, whether all that many of our students are as focused on the Court, on constitutional doctrine, and on public law generally as constitutional-law teachers tend to assume -- is hard to know.

What struck, and troubled, me, though -- and again, the quote above is not taken from one of Dean Chemerinsky's regular op-eds, but from the American Association of Law Schools' president's message --  was the unmistakable "othering" of "our conservative students" in his account. Any reader -- including any of "our conservative students" -- understands that the "conservative students" mentioned, unlike the "progressive and even moderate" ones, are, really, outside the "we." They exist, to be sure, but they are, and they represent, problems to be overcome, and obstacles to be navigated. They are not the ones to whom (quoting the president's message) "we must provide . . . a basis for hope" -- after all, the president's "hope" is that they will no longer have reason to be "jubilant" -- and they are not (not really) the ones "we" need to make sure "feel included and safe and that they belong." Some of "our" students are "dejected", but idealistic and correct; others are "jubilant" but wrong -- indeed, morally obtuse. If this "othering" is happening in the president's message, I suppose it is probably happening, and being experienced by many students, in a lot of law-school classrooms.

Institutions of higher education -- nonstate ones, anyway -- are entitled, in my view, to organize themselves around distinctive -- and even partisan -- missions, commitments, methodologies, and aims. At the same time, it should not be surprising if attitudes like the ones communicated in Dean Chemerinsky's message prompt pushback from officials and consumers, whose reasons for dejection, and whose hopes, might be different from his.

Pope Benedict XVI's Legal Thought

Like many, I have been reflecting a bit on the work and thought of the late Pope Benedict XVI.  I am not qualified to provide a worth-reading reflection on these matters, but I did want to call attention to a helpful volume, edited by my friends Prof. Marta Cartabia and Prof. Andrea Simoncini, called Pope Benedict's XVI Legal Thought:  A Dialogue on the Foundation of Law.  Contributors include (in addition to the editors) Mary Ann Glendon, Andrea Pin, Joseph Weiler, John Witte, and many others.  

Here is the blurb from That Web Site:

Throughout Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI's pontificate he spoke to a range of political, civil, academic, and other cultural authorities. The speeches he delivered in these contexts reveal a striking sensitivity to the fundamental problems of law, justice, and democracy. He often presented a call for Christians to address issues of public ethics such as life, death, and family from what they have in common with other fellow citizens: reason. This book discusses the speeches in which the Pope Emeritus reflected most explicitly on this issue, along with the commentary from a number of distinguished legal scholars. It responds to Benedict's invitation to engage in public discussion on the limits of positivist reason in the domain of law from his address to the Bundestag. Although the topics of each address vary, they nevertheless are joined by a series of core ideas whereby Benedict sketches, unpacks, and develops an organic and coherent way to formulate a “public teaching” on the topic of justice and law.

R.I.P.

Religiously Affiliated Law Schools conference . . . coming up!

After a little bit of a hiatus, the conference of the Religiously Affiliated Law Schools is coming up, and is this year being hosted by Prof. Sam Levine and his team at Touro.  I hope to see MOJ bloggers and readers there!  Here's the conference info.  The theme is, well, broad: "The Past, Present, and Future of Religiously Affiliated Law Schools".  Come join us!

Here is the program:

Conference Program

Thursday, September 15 

• 9:00 - 9:30 am - Breakfast and Welcome
  Elena B. Langan, Dean and Professor of Law, Touro Law Center
  Samuel J. Levine, Professor of Law and Director, Jewish Law Institute, Touro Law Center -- Conference Organizer
  
  
• 9:30 - 10:30 am - Religion in the Intellectual Life of the Law School
  Jeffrey A. Brauch, Professor, Executive Director, Center for Global Justice, Regent University School of Law --- Moderator
  Rodger Citron, Associate Dean for Research and Scholarship and Professor of Law, Touro Law Center
  Brad J. Lingo, Dean, Regent University School of Law     
  Judith A. McMorrow, Professor of Law, Boston College Law School 
  
  
• 10:30 - 10:40 am - Break
  
  
• 10:40 - 11:40 am -- Religion and Faculty Hiring
  Deseriee Kennedy, Professor of Law, Touro Law Center -- Moderator 
  John M. Breen, Georgia Reithal Professor of Law, Loyola University Chicago
  Michael A. Helfand,  Brenden Mann Foundation Chair in Law and Religion and Co-Director, Nootbaar Institute for Law, Religion and Ethics, Pepperdine Caruso School of Law 
  Lucia A. Silecchia, Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Faculty Research,
  Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law
  
  
• 11:40 - 11:50 am - Break
  
  
• 11:50 am - 12:50 pm - Religious Thought in Criminal Law Scholarship and Advocacy
  Mark Osler, Professor and Robert and Marion Short Distinguished Chair in Law, Univ. of St. Thomas (MN) -- Moderator
  Melina A. Healey, Director of Clinical Programs and Assistant Clinical Professor, Touro Law Center 
  Marah Stith McLeod, Associate Professor of Law, Notre Dame Law School 
  Honorable Richard J. Sullivan, United States Circuit Court Judge for the Second Circuit
  
  
• 12:50 - 2:30 pm - Lunch/Tour of Central Islip State Hospital Cemetery
  
  
• 2:30 - 3:40 pm - Past, Present, and Future of Religiously Affiliated Law Schools (I)
  

  Patricia Salkin, Senior Vice President, Academic Affairs, Provost, Graduate and Professional Divisions, Touro University -- Moderator
  Marvin Krislov, President, Pace University  
  Tim Perrin, Senior Vice President for Strategic Implementation, Pepperdine University
  D. Gordon Smith, Dean, Ira A. Fulton Chair and Professor of Law, BYU Law School

• 3:40 - 3:50 pm - Break
  
  
• 3:50 - 5:00 pm - Past, Present, and Future of Religiously Affiliated Law Schools (II)
  Patricia Salkin, Senior Vice President, Academic Affairs, Provost, Graduate and Professional Divisions, Touro University -- Moderator
  Fayneese S. Miller, President, Hamline University 
  Rod Smolla, President, Vermont Law and Graduate School
  Michael Waterstone,  Fritz B. Burns Dean, Loyola Law School, Senior Vice President, Loyola Marymount University, Professor of Law  
  
  
• 5:00 pm - Tour and Reception, Judaica Room, Gould Law Library
  
  
• 6:00 pm - Dinner

Friday, September 16

• 9:00 - 9:30 am - Breakfast
  
  
• 9:30 - 10:30 am Religion and the Practice of Law (I)
  Mark Osler, Professor and Robert and Marion Short Distinguished Chair in Law, Univ. of St. Thomas (MN) -- Moderator
  Jeanne Bishop,  Assistant Public Defender at Cook County Public Defender's Office
  Allen Fagin, Former Chairman, Proskauer Rose, LLP; Board Member & Senior Advisor, Validity Finance  
  Joel A. Nichols, Interim Dean and Mengler Chair in Law, Univ. of St. Thomas (MN) 
  
  
• 10:30 - 10:45 am - Break
  
  
• 10:45 - 11:45 am - Religion and the Practice of Law (II)
  Tiffany C. Graham, Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion and Associate Professor of Law, Touro Law Center -- Moderator 
  Honorable Joseph F. Bianco, United States Circuit Court Judge for the Second Circuit
  Jordi Goodman, Visiting Clinical Assistant Professor, BU/MIT Technology Law Clinic,
  Boston University School of Law
  Randy Lee, Professor of Law, Widener Law Commonwealth 
  
  
• 12:00 - 1:00 pm - Lunch and Keynote Address
  Russell G. Pearce, Edward & Marilyn Bellet Chair in Legal Ethics, Morality, and Religion
  Fordham University School of Law
  
  
• 1:00 - 2:15 pm - Religious Liberty Advocacy
  John Linarelli, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Law, Touro Law Center -- Moderator 
  Nathan J. Diament, Executive Director, Orthodox Union Advocacy Center
  Josh McDaniel, Visiting Assistant Clinical Professor of Law, Director, Religious Freedom Clinic, Harvard Law School
  John Meiser, Supervising Attorney, Religious Liberty Clinic, Notre Dame Law School
  Lori Windham, Senior Counsel, Becket
  
  
• 2:15 - 2:30 pm - Closing Remarks
  Elena B. Langan, Dean and Professor of Law, Touro Law Center
  Samuel J. Levine, Professor of Law and Director, Jewish Law Institute, Touro Law Center -- Conference Organizer

James Phillips on McCulloch and Gettysburg

Prof. James Phillips (Chapman) passed this on (below), and I'm happy to share it, with his permission:

I'm teaching constitutional law this year for the first time. I was wondering if PrawfsBlawg readers know whether anyone has ever pointed out the similarity between Chief Justice Marshall's description of our constitutional system of government in McCulloch v. Maryland and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address?

McCulloch v. Maryland: “The government of the Union, then ..., is emphatically, and truly, a government of the people. In form and in substance it emanates from them. Its powers are granted by them, and are to be exercised directly on them, and for their benefit.”

Gettysburg Address: "...and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

The ordering—of, by, for—is even the same. No doubt Lincoln would have been very familiar with McCulloch as a lawyer. In fact, perhaps there are bigger implications than just rhetoric. Maybe Lincoln drew heavily upon Marshall's ideas about the nature of the relationship between the government and the people as well as state sovereignty, in McCulloch and perhaps other cases or writings of Marshall.

Just curious if others have noticed this or know of any other connection between McCulloch (or more broadly Marshall) and Lincoln?

UPDATE: Akhil Amar has kindly brought to our attention that he notes this connection between Marshall’s language in McCulloch and Lincoln on pages 533-534 of his most recent book: The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840 (2021). Amar quotes the same passage noted in the post from Marshall, and then writes:

“Of the people, from the people, by the people, for the people. These were words and ideas that would resonate in American history, as young Americans like Daniel Webster (one of several oral advocates who argued the bank’s case in McCulloch) and even younger Americans like Abraham Lincoln (still a boy in 1819) would later carry the Washington-Hamilton-Marshall flag deeper into the century.”

Thoughts on Hopeful Retreat from Darkness: A (short) response to Howard

Unlike Howard -- and, I realize, most Prawfsbloggers and readers -- I have longed hoped for, and yesterday welcomed, the overruling of Roe and Casey.  Both were wrongly decided, and both distorted badly both the Court's role and our political life.  In my view, the traditional stare decisis factors weigh in favor of the majority's decision and I regret the Chief Justice's implausible argument that the Mississippi law can be reconciled with a re-imagined abortion right.  The three dissenters' views about Casey and judicial legitimacy are, I think, upside-down.  And, I believe that pre-natal human beings share in the equal dignity that entitles all of us to protection from violence.  (If anyone is interested, here is a law-review-type version of the amicus brief I and some others did in Dobbs.  Nutshell version, Rehnquist -- in Roe, Casey, and Glucksberg -- was right.)

Like (I assume) everyone else, I am not confident I know what the political/electoral/social consequences of the ruling will be.  I do not expect a substantial reduction in the number of abortions in the United States; I do not know which political camp Dobbs helps; I am not optimistic about the possibilities for reaching a European-style equilibrium nationwide; I do not think it is likely that Dobbs will lead to judicial retreat from other previously recognized unenumerated rights, such as those enforced in Pierce, Griswold, Loving, and Obergefell; I am sure Howard is right that the courts are not and will not soon be out of this issue; and it seems to me very unlikely that either "side" -- or, for that matter, supporters of some kind of compromise -- will secure either a constitutional amendment or nationalizing legislation. 

I hope that what (in my view) has fairly been characterized as the "abortion distortion" in other areas of law will dissipate, and also that political actors will make serious, good-faith efforts to come together on policies that generously support children and those who care for them.  I expect, but regret, that most law students, going forward, will be taught, as an orthodoxy from which dissent is at best suspect, a particular -- and, in my view, inaccurate -- narrative of Roe/Casey/Dobbs and the place of that narrative in our constitutional history, politics, and doctrine.  Those who are will be ill-served. 

"Religion and the American Constitutional Experiment" - Order Now and Save Big!

The "Black Legend" (of American constitutional law) returns

Fifteen years ago (!), when I was visiting at the University of Chicago Law School (a wonderful experience), I contributed a response to a post (on the Law School's blog . . . remember those?) by Geof Stone, in which he shared what he called a "painfully awkward observation" that the justices in the majority of the Court's Gonzales v. Carhart - in which the Court upheld a ban on partial-birth abortions -- were Catholic.  "It is mortifying to have to point this out. But it is too obvious, and too telling, to ignore[,]" he said.  "[T]hese justices have failed to respect the fundamental difference between religious belief and morality," he charged.

Brian Leiter recently re-upped Prof. Stone's con-law version of The Black Legend, here.  He wrote (while conceding, as anyone must, the "unhappy fact is that there are clearly colorable legal arguments for overruling Roe"): 

Stone's analysis generated an uproar, but it was correct then, as it would be correct now:  someone with a conservative Catholic upbringing will of course regard abortion as verboten, and will thus find attractive--even without recognizing their real motivations--any colorable legal arguments that return the question of its permissibility to the legislative process (knowing full well, of course, that its availability will be restricted as a result).

As I wrote, though, in my response to Geof way-back-when, (a) there is nothing "Catholic" about the idea that the Constitution did and does not disable political majorities from enacting reasonable regulations of abortion (including, among other things, a prohibition on a procedure that involves sticking a scissor through the skull of a still-living fetus and "evacuating" his or her "cranial contents"), and (b) it is at least as likely that the non-Catholic justices' (both in Carhart and in -- it appears -- Dobbs) various commitments supplied "motivations" for disregarding what many of us think are straightforward, unremarkable analyses and arguments.  

I wrote then (I still cannot get over how long ago that was!):

[I]t is not clear why the claim "human fetuses are moral subjects and this fact constrains what should be done with and to them" is any more "religious", or any less "moral", than the claim "all human beings are moral equals, regardless of race, and should be treated as such in law."  What's more, even if it were true that the former claim is "religious" (certainly, for many, it is religiously motivated or grounded), it does not violate -- indeed, I do not think it even implicates -- the "separation of church and state" that our Constitution is thought to require.

It is interesting, I think, that Professor Stone invokes the example of Justice Brennan.  Although I believe that Roe was wrongly decided, it is impossible not to admire the Justice.  And, to me, it is clear that Justice Brennan's powerful opinions in Furman and Gregg -- with their strong and stirring invocations of "human dignity" as a limit on what governments may do the accused -- reflect views that, for Justice Brennan, were rooted in his religious faith.  Was he, therefore, a "faith-based justice" when he voted to strike down every death-penalty law in the nation?

 

 

Simon Lazarus on the Yale Law School "Trap House Affair"

Brian Leiter has posted a memorandum, dated Nov. 9, written by Simon Lazarus (Yale Law School '67), on the so-called "Trap House Affair" at Yale Law School, with which I am sure all Prawfsblawg readers are familiar.  Like Lazarus, and as a (grateful) YLS graduate, "I’ve become increasingly disappointed by the YLS administration’s persistent mishandling of the matter – which is largely responsible for escalating a small, apparently manageable misunderstanding between elements of the student body, into a focus for withering national and international criticism of YLS, by prominent journalists and academics."  And, I endorse Lazarus's list of five steps that YLS should take, as soon as possible, "to restore its stature as a bastion of basic rule of law and Bill of Rights-compatible principles."

UPDATE:  The "affair", it appears, is even worse than Lazarus suggests.  (HT: David Lat)

First Amendment fieldwork in Pleasant Grove

Last week, I happened to pass through Pleasant Grove, Utah.  First Amendment types will recall that, back in 2009, the Supreme Court issued a (unanimous) ruling in a case called Pleasant Grove City v. Summum, which had to do with government-speech and public-forum doctrines, and with a dispute over the City's refusal to put up a monument containing the "Seven Aphorisms" of Summum in its "Pioneer Park".  The City had accepted, the challengers noted, a privately donated monument of the Ten Commandments.  Well, because this is a full-service law-prawf-blawg, here is a picture of the Commandments, in the Park:

There are, outside the photo, some other various monuments and plaques, and also some old-timey, Utah-frontier-era buildings/reproductions.

(For what it's worth, if you're in Utah, I recommend getting into the Wasatch over wandering through suburbs looking for SCOTUS relics.)

 

Property Law exam possibilities . . . and mountain biking

I suppose the Property prawfs out there have moved from exam-writing to exam-grading, but I thought this update from Northern Michigan's outstanding Copper Harbor mountain-biking trail-club might be of interest.  It's been a (really!) long time since I took a property exam, but the club's announcement read like an issue-spotter!

More on the "codgers" . . . and institutional pluralism.

Paul noted, a few days ago, the very interesting and recently published conversation between Profs. Seidman and Tushnet.  The former had an interesting take on Georgetown University Law Center's Catholic character and mission:

"Georgetown Law Center is a nominally Catholic institution and one aspect of the residual Catholicism there is the notion that we’re educating the whole person. Frankly, that gives me the creeps."

Prof. Mark Tushnet's response should also be noted, though:

I would say we might want to think about whether different institutions could assert different kinds of jurisdiction and in this context it’s not irrelevant that Georgetown is an institution affiliated with the Society of Jesus and Harvard is not. It might well be that having a universe of 170 whatever law schools some of which take the care of the whole person seriously, others of which limit their jurisdiction, that might be a good thing.  Call it institutional pluralism or diversity. . . .

"Institutional pluralism."  I like that!

Fifth Annual Notre Dame National Appellate Advocacy Tournament for Religious Freedom

Spread the word!  The Notre Dame Law School Moot Court Board is pleased to announce its Fifth Annual Notre Dame National Appellate Advocacy Tournament for Religious Freedom, taking place Friday, April 9, 2021 through Sunday, April 11, 2021. Every year, teams from law schools across the country participate in our Tournament, arguing before a mock Supreme Court of the United States. We hope you will join us this spring to celebrate student scholarship, appellate advocacy training, and address challenging questions involving the First Amendment. Be sure to mark your calendars, and we hope to see you (virtually) for this exciting event!

More information is available here:  Download RFT External Invitation.

"Church, State & Society" Writing Competition

The Notre Dame Program on Church, State & Society  is sponsoring a writing competition for students:

The Program on Church, State & Society at Notre Dame Law School is pleased to announce a writing competition on topics and questions within the Program’s focus. This writing competition requests student-authored scholarly papers and will honor winners with cash awards. The purpose of this writing competition is to encourage scholarship related to the intersection of church, state & society, and in particular how the law structures and governs that intersection.

Topic and Form: Papers should be focused, broadly, on topics related to church, state & society. For guidance on selecting a topic, students may wish to view our Program website and mission statement: https://churchstate.nd.edu/

Papers must be between 9,000-13,000 words, including footnotes and/or endnotes. Papers should be double spaced and use Bluebook citation rules.

Eligibility: The competition is open to law students in good standing, enrolled in a traditional law degree (J.D. or LL.B.), a Master’s degree (LL.M.), or a doctoral degree (S.J.D./J.S.D. or Ph.D.) program at an ABA-accredited law school within the United States. The competition is also open to recent graduates not yet practicing law (those completing clerkships or engaged in similar pursuits are eligible). Co-authored papers will not be accepted.

Submissions: Papers must be submitted by February 15th, 2021. Winners will be announced on or before May 7th, 2021. Papers must be e-mailed to the Program Director on Church, State & Society in .pdf form. Each submission must include a cover letter and resume in a separate .pdf document. Papers should not include author names in order to ensure that the Program Director can deliver submissions to judges and have them scored with anonymity. Emailed submissions should be sent with “2020 Writing Competition” in the subject line, and addressed to: Jonathan Hannah, J.D. at [email protected]

Judges: Papers will be judged by Church, State & Society Director, Richard W. Garnett, other faculty members at Notre Dame Law School, and possibly law & religion scholars from other U.S. law schools.

Prizes: First Place, $4,000 cash award; Second Place, $3,000 cash award; Third Place, $2,000 cash award; Honorable Mention, $1,000 cash award.

Joel Harrison on "Post-Liberal Religious Liberty"

Dr. Joel Harrison, of the University of Sydney, has a new book with Cambridge University Press, called Post-Liberal Religious Liberty: Forming Communities of Charity.  (Get yours here.)  I'm honored that he engages -- critically, but fairly and carefully -- my own church-state writing.  I asked him to supply Prawfs with an "extended blurb", to give readers a sense of the argument.  Here it is:

Post-Liberal Religious Liberty: Forming Communities of Charity (Cambridge University Press, 2020)

Why should we care about religious liberty? What is religious liberty meant to protect? In Post-Liberal Religious Liberty: Forming Communities of Charity (Cambridge University Press, 2020), Joel Harrison argues that religious liberty protects the quest for true religion. It facilitates the free creation of communities of solidarity, fraternity, and charity.

This argument challenges the increasingly popular liberal egalitarian account of religious liberty.  According to this account, found in the writing of scholars like Ronald Dworkin and Cécile Laborde, as well as case law, religious liberty is a subset of or signifier for a broader category of liberty, protecting personal autonomy or authenticity.  Harrison traces how this has two consequences: it treats as suspect any claim to consider religion, traditionally understood, as especially important; and it leads to the claim that religious groups and persons should increasingly be subject to state law, where the law reflects the claimed autonomy interests of individuals.

Harrison argues that challenging this account requires challenging how liberalism fundamentally understands religion, the ends of a political community, and the role of civil authority.  Religion on this understanding is cast as private, and increasingly associated with individual self-definition or even consumption. Political order is cast as secular, with civil authority defined by a logic claimed to be autonomous of religion: negotiating and furthering individual rights-claims. However, this differentiation between religion and the secular rests on a narrative of secularisation that, Harrison argues, is in reality a half-concealed theology.

In contrast, Post-Liberal Religious Liberty recovers a different theological and political vision. It draws especially from Augustine of Hippo, a subsequent tradition of associational thinking, and contemporary post-liberal thinkers like John Milbank.  Harrison argues that civil authority should be understood as an arm for pursuing human flourishing, right relationship, or the virtuous life, one complementary with and responsive to the Church. This requires a commitment to religion – the love of God and neighbour – as central to the ends of a political community.  Such claims are challenged, in whole or in part, even within Christian thought. Harrison contrasts this argument with the writing of three prominent modern Christian scholars: John Finnis, Richard Garnett, and Nicholas Wolterstorff. However, he argues that only such a commitment makes sense of the liberty of plural religious groups. It points to a good – our common good – that religious liberty serves.

(Available here, discount code: PLRL2020; or via Cambridge Core online)

Deadline approaching for Fred C. Zacharias Memorial Prize for Scholarship in Professional Responsibility

Submissions and nominations of articles are being accepted for the eleventh annual Fred C. Zacharias Memorial Prize for Scholarship in Professional Responsibility.  To honor Fred’s memory, the committee will select from among articles in the field of Professional Responsibility with a publication date of 2020.  The prize will be awarded at the 2021 AALS Annual Meeting.  Please send submissions and nominations to Professor Samuel Levine at Touro Law Center: [email protected].  The deadline for submissions and nominations is September 1, 2020.

"Big Mountain Jesus" statue vandalized

I have blogged a few times, over the years, about the "Big Mountain Jesus" statue at Whitefish ski resort (a great place, BTW) in Montana.  I'm very sorry to share the news that the statue was vandalized last weekend.   Here's a little bit, from a short essay I did a while back, about the statue (and an earlier round of a different sort of iconoclasm):

Whitefish Mountain, a ski resort in northwest Montana, is known for its spicy terrain, rime-clothed “snow ghosts,” and postcard-perfect views of Glacier ­National Park. And, of course, for “Big Mountain Jesus.”

Big Mountain Jesus is a kitschy but beloved dashboard-ornament-style six-foot-tall statue standing on a six-foot-tall stone pedestal near the summit of one of Whitefish’s peaks. It was erected in 1955 by some local Knights of Columbus who had served in Italy during World War II with the 10th Mountain Division and remembered fondly the statues and shrines that were ubiquitous in the Apennines and Alps. Because Whitefish and the statue are on leased public lands, and the Knights’ permit has to be ­reauthorized by the United States Forest Service every ten years, the enterprising secularizers at the Freedom from Religion Foundation eventually, and predictably, made a federal case out of Big Mountain Jesus, claiming among other things that it “excludes all the brave Jews and atheists that fought in World War II.”

The statue survives, for now, notwithstanding the lack of any accompanying, equal-time-supplying idols or icons. The federal judge assigned to the case noted that “[t]o some, Big Mountain Jesus is offensive and to others it represents only a religious symbol. But the court suspects that for most who happen to encounter Big Mountain Jesus, it neither offends nor inspires.” Instead, the memorial “serves as a historical reminder of those bygone days of sack lunches, ungroomed runs, rope tows, t-bars, leather ski boots, and 210 cm skis.” The relevant U.S. Court of ­Appeals took the auspices and then agreed, duly reporting that Big Mountain Jesus has a “secular purpose” and—because “the flippant interactions of locals and tourists with the statue suggest secular perceptions and uses: decorating it in Mardi Gras beads, adorning it in ski gear, taking pictures with it, high-fiving it as they ski by, and posing in Facebook pictures”—the statue does not “endorse” Christianity.

According to the news report, "the forest service learned of the vandalism on Monday, but did not yet have information on whether the incident is being investigated."

Espinoza, long projects, and doctrinal change

Today's decision in Espinoza is, for me, very welcome, but also prompts some strange feelings and emotions.  I have been working on (what I regard as) the cluster of school-choice/educational-pluralism/religious-freedom issues and questions for a long time.  (Here, for example, is an essay on "The Blaine Amendments" from 17 years ago.)  Professor Garnett the Greater (i.e., Nicole Stelle Garnett) was working to challenge state-law exclusions of religious schools from choice and scholarship programs with the merry band at the Institute for Justice in the mid-1990s, and I filed (unsuccessfully!) cert. petitions in Vermont and Maine cases raising the matter, with Prof. Michael Stokes Paulsen, back in 1999 (I think!). 

Clearly, the doctrine has evolved (for the better, I think) in this area.  From Lemon and Nyquist, to Zelman and Mitchell, and now to Trinity Lutheran and Espinoza, the rules have changed from (as I see it) "discrimination against religious schools and those who choose them is often required" to "discrimination against religious schools and those who choose them is rarely permitted."  It's fascinating to step back, a bit, and trace the development, follow the lines of argument, note the incremental steps.  We will see what the real-world policy effects and implications are, but my own hope is that they will include enhanced educational pluralism, increased choice and opportunity, and a brighter future for currently beleaguered ("in these complicated times") Catholic schools.  (I realize, of course, that many Prawfs readers and colleagues will disagree, which is, of course, fine.)

All that aside, there is a (for me) weird "what now?" (or, "now what?") feeling.  A development in legal doctrine that I have been hoping for, and fretting about, for a long time, has come about.  I don't have any illusions, to be clear, that I had anything to do with it and I certainly realize I'm far from being the only or first lawyer or law professor to have this feeling.    

"What It Means To Be Human: The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics"

Congratulations to my friend and Notre Dame colleague, Carter Snead, on his forthcoming (timely, important) book, What It Means To Be Human.  Here's a blurb: 

The natural limits of the human body make us vulnerable and therefore dependent, throughout our lives, on others. Yet American law and policy disregard these stubborn facts, with statutes and judicial decisions that presume people to be autonomous, defined by their capacity to choose. As legal scholar O. Carter Snead points out, this individualistic ideology captures important truths about human freedom, but it also means that we have no obligations to each other unless we actively, voluntarily embrace them. Under such circumstances, the neediest must rely on charitable care. When it is not forthcoming, law and policy cannot adequately respond.

What It Means to Be Human makes the case for a new paradigm, one that better represents the gifts and challenges of being human. Inspired by the insights of Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor, Snead proposes a vision of human identity and flourishing that supports those who are profoundly vulnerable and dependent―children, the disabled, and the elderly. To show how such a vision would affect law and policy, he addresses three complex issues in bioethics: abortion, assisted reproductive technology, and end-of-life decisions. Avoiding typical dichotomies of conservative-versus-liberal and secular-versus-religious, Snead recasts debates over these issues and situates them within his framework of embodiment and dependence. He concludes that, if the law is built on premises that reflect the fully lived reality of life, it will provide support for the vulnerable, including the unborn, mothers, families, and those nearing the end of their lives. In this way, he argues, policy can ensure that people have the care they need in order to thrive.

In this provocative and consequential book, Snead rethinks how the law represents human experiences so that it might govern more wisely, justly, and humanely.

"Friendship in a Time of Cyberattack"

Apologies if this is a bit off-Prawfs-topic, but I enjoyed this piece, "Friendship in a Time of Cyberattack," by my theorist-and-theologian friend (and fellow Duke Blue Devils fan!), Mike Baxter.  Pope Francis, Guardini, Pieper, Berry, Simon, and MacIntyre all make appearances in Mike's discussion of friendship, time, technology, the university, and the polis. Here's just a little bit:

What the cyberattack did for us at Regis is open up the possibility of recognizing how our life and work together is so deeply dependent on digital technology and to consider the ways it could be enhanced by making ourselves less dependent on it. . . .

The cyberattack also created commonality between faculty and students, for we were in the same boat, with emails failing, assignments not posting, tests and exams running late. More importantly, there was a more personal touch to the interactions between students and faculty. Papers were graded by hand, in the penmanship of the grader. With no email, more students came by during office hours to ask about something. And there was a deeper sense that class was going to occur in the classroom, with everyone together, rather than dispersed through list-servers, online bulletin boards, and such. Finally, most importantly, it created common ground among faculty, for the simple fact that there was more time, what with fewer meetings, no department and college wide assessments to do, and so on; and with more time comes more conversations about what we are teaching and working on. An added factor here was that with on-line resources down, intellectual conversation is more likely to occur locally, which can be surprisingly fruitful. In other words, with our on-line capacities down, we were less able to have conversations with colleagues across the country and found ourselves drawn more into talking with colleagues down the hall or in the building across the quad.

In these (and other) ways we found ourselves gifted with the time and space for cultivating or renewing friendships in all the varieties and permutations discussed by Aristotle: utility, pleasure, among equals, among those older and younger, and, most importantly, true friendship, based on a common pursuit of the good. . . .

Criminal Law syllabus / course aims and goals

Over the years, I've revised, tweaked, abandoned, and cobbled together a few pages, at the front of the syllabus, about the aims and goals of my first-year Criminal Law course. To avoid exam-grading obligations, I'm messing around with them again. And, if anyone else needs an avoidance-behavior opportunity, I'd welcome reactions and suggestions!  Below the jump . . .

Course Description and (Some) Goals:

            In this introductory course, we will read, talk, learn, and think about the Criminal Law. Our focus will be, for the most part, on what is often called “the general part” of Criminal Law rather than on specific offenses in particular jurisdictions. We will cover technical matters and traditional doctrines as well as the theoretical, philosophical, and moral assumptions, commitments, and goals that shape the ways we define, prosecute, and punish crimes. The study of Criminal Law can and should be challenging and unsettling – and also fascinating and fun. I look forward to working with you.

            A goal for this class, and for the entire first year of law school, is to learn how – and to push ourselves – to read carefully, write clearly, and think rigorously, “like a lawyer.” More specifically, my hope for each one of you is that you will acquire and develop:

(1) The ability to read and the habit of reading legal materials – cases, statutes, constitutions, etc. – in a careful and disciplined way. In many contexts, skimming texts for the “general idea” works fine. In the Criminal Law and law-school contexts, though, it usually doesn’t. As you’ll see, words matter: they can make the difference between going home and going to prison.

(2) The ability to draw relevant and instructive comparisons and similarly relevant and instructive distinctions. This is a big part of what “legal reasoning” is all about. You should be able to pull general principles and rules from one case and apply them to another – or, to explain why they should not be applied and others should be instead. In your law-school classes, when your teachers push you with hypotheticals and changed facts, this kind of reasoning is what we are aiming for.

(3) An appreciation for the fact – and, to be clear, it is a fact – that legal doctrines, rules, tests, and standards reflect and are shaped by underlying premises, assumptions, values, and commitments. You should be able to think critically about these doctrines and identify the premises they reflect and their likely implications. The doctrines and definitions you will study are what they are for certain reasons and because of certain arguments.

(4) A familiarity with a range of traditional and contemporary Criminal Law terms and doctrines and also with certain notable features of the Model Penal Code. Because Notre Dame Law School students come from, and go to, a wide array of jurisdictions, it does not make sense to limit ourselves to any particular jurisdiction’s criminal statutes. It does make sense, though, to notice and appreciate the fact that, sometimes, different jurisdictions take different approaches, employ different definitions, and apply different rules.

(5) The ability to listen carefully and sympathetically to others’ arguments – especially arguments with which you think you disagree, or which irritate or offend you, or which challenge or unsettle you – and to reflect upon them, to engage them, and to respond thoughtfully and civilly to them. To teach, and to study, Criminal Law appropriately requires engaging with a number of difficult and controversial questions and topics.

(6) A genuine and abiding enthusiasm for lawyering and the legal enterprise, and a happy resolution to live your life in the profession – in this vocation – as a “different kind of lawyer.”

            Now, at some point, you will almost certainly ask yourself “why isn’t this class more like Law & Order . . . or Sherlock, or Suits, or Better Call Saul?” The truth is, in the “real world,” there is much, much more to “criminal law” than you will encounter in this course. This course is not (directly) about search-and-seizure rules, policing and profiling, interrogation practices, trial procedures, evidence, post-conviction review, prison conditions, criminology, or the death penalty. Our subject – substantive Criminal Law – is only one part of (what is often, but misleadingly, called) the criminal-justice “system.” The criminal-law process, as it plays out in the trenches, involves and is influenced by bureaucracy, procedural rules, personalities, choices, evidence, case-specific facts, race, budgets, poverty, wealth, politics, fear, prejudice, bravery, and evil. Those of you who decide to practice criminal law (or who really like crime dramas) will want to explore, during your law-school career, a wide variety of other courses. (When the time comes, I’ll be happy to offer suggestions.)

        That said, relatively few of you will actually practice criminal law. So . . .  why is Criminal Law a required course? Here are a few reasons: First, the first-year Criminal Law course is intended to continue your introduction to statutes and to the very important, lawyerly task of interpreting and applying them. You’ll need this skill in many upper-level courses and almost all of you will need it in practice as well. Second, it lays a foundation for understanding and thinking critically about the fairness, rationality, efficiency, and morality of the criminal process and you ought to be able to do these things as a lawyer – especially as a Notre Dame lawyer – and, even more importantly, as a citizen. Third, this course raises fundamental “big questions” about the law. For example: Why do we punish? What justifies punishment? What counts as a harm? When are people responsible and/or culpable for their actions or for the harms they cause? What are the limits on the coercive power of the state? These questions will arise in different forms in many other classes, in many areas of practice, and in any “examined life.” Our hope is that “Notre Dame Lawyers” will take them particularly seriously.